Tom Friedman wrote an editorial in the Times on Wednesday titled, “Calling All Pakistanis.” His plea was for the average citizen in Pakistan to step forward and denounce this extremism—not just for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake as well: Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence […]
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Report from the North
It’s hard to not be cynical when the talking heads announce that the US economy is “officially” in a recession and has been since December 2007. The absurdity of not being able to name what everybody knew until a year after the fact is one more piece of what feels like the cold-blooded machinations of […]
Mumbai is a Golden Songbird
Tree shrine in Mumbai, August 2008 As a follow up to my earlier posting about Mumbai, I am including a very moving op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times over the weekend. For those of you who are long time or newly converted Indiaphiles (I’m in the latter category) I think this piece […]
Philip Schultz
Failure To pay for my father’s funeral I borrowed money from people he already owed money to. One called him a nobody. No, I said, he was a failure. You can’t remember a nobody’s name, that’s why they’re called nobodies. Failures are unforgettable. The rabbi who read a stock eulogy about a man who didn’t […]
Mourning Mumbai
Taj Hotel in Mumbai, August 2008 The last several days my thoughts have been focused on the tragedy in Mumbai. I have only been to Mumbai once, and I have no family blood ties to that or any other part of India. But sometimes a place or a culture captures you inexplicably, and that is […]
Those Who Can’t Do, Write?
In the spirit of keeping things light at this time of year when the food and the body can start feeling just a little heavy, here’s the Guardian‘s update on one of my favorite annual awards—The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction. You gotta love it, these laughable attempts to describe one of life’s greatest […]
A New Flavor of Slow
Barbara Ganley, near her home in Weybridge, Vt., thinks of blogging as a meditative art form. The article below from the Sunday New York Times caught my attention immediately. Slow blogging. But of course! As aligned as my blogging efforts have been with the relatively new term “slow”, I must admit I had not heard […]
Elizabeth Peyton: In Between
Flower Ben, by Elizabeth Peyton I have had a long relationship of ambivalence with Elizabeth Peyton’s work. And I’m not alone. As famous as she is–she is a true art world “darling”–there are many like me who cannot find their deep way into her work, to that place where you really feel connected. Sometimes a […]
Lewis Hyde, Poet
Desert “We have to be in a desert, for he whom we must love is absent.” –Simone Weil Early morning and the mist, saturated with light, obscures the disappearing powerlines. A damp obscurity but a desert nonetheless: birds that fly into it lose their bodies and survive as the songs of birds, the tallest locust […]
Dorothea Tanning: With Our Souls in Our Laps
Dorothea Tanning, painter and poet Evening He told us, with the years, you will come To love the world. And we sat there with our souls in our laps, And comforted them. –Dorothea Tanning Tanning is that rare being who embodies gifts in the poetic domain as well as the visual. A woman with a […]