Marc Jampole: Where do the two candidates stand on the issues?
Here is an issue-by-issue comparison of the two leading presidential candidates’ positions. One represents the most progressive national program in the history of this country, the other a hodgepodge of … Continue reading
William Blake: The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of … Continue reading
Video: “Symphony in Black” by Duke Ellington (featuring Billie Holiday’s first filmed performance)
. In September of 1935, Paramount Pictures released a nine-minute film — Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life, an early cinematic depiction of African-American culture. It features Duke … Continue reading
Phoebe A. Cirio: A Tragic Failure to Communicate
“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” Captain to Luke in Cool Hand Luke. I am a white, middle-aged woman, someone not likely to be regarded as a … Continue reading
Video: When the FBI knocks on your door, you should handle it just like this woman.
An Austin, Texas woman, who is a peaceful antiwar activist, was visited by the FBI. They wanted to know if she knew of “any plans to destroy property.” Here’s how … Continue reading
Audio: Virginia Woolf — “Words Fail Me” (rare recording)
. In this excerpt from a 1937 BBC radio broadcast, the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice, the great author tells us that words “hate being useful; they hate making … Continue reading
Video: Lou Reed’s screen test filmed by Andy Warhol
Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol shot close to 500 short movies of friends, celebrities, and models at his studio known as The Factory. The indie-rock duet Dean and Britta … Continue reading
Sir Philip Sidney: A Ditty
My true love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one to the other given: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, There never … Continue reading
Wendell Berry: On Love, Freedom and Community
People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their … Continue reading
Marc Jampole: KABLAM!!
Debate predictions: Media face 3 moments of truth & the “birther” becomes a quitter. The news media would like to cast the upcoming presidential debates as an Armageddon-like battle for … Continue reading
Christina Rossetti: From Sunset to Star Rise
Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, A silly sheep benighted from the fold, A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. … Continue reading
George Monbiot: Disposable Planet
In western society, consumerism occupies a sacred and inviolable space, while the wonders of the living world are dispensable. The world’s largest land animal, the biggest fish, the bird with … Continue reading
Elizabeth Gargano: Soup
That fall the hunger came upon her, fierce and angry, a hunger for apples bubbling in a cast-iron pan, tart, grainy with cinnamon, for yams bursting out of their burnt … Continue reading
Peter Van Buren: It’s Personal
Apologizing to My Daughter for the Last 15 Years of War I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to such moments, … Continue reading
Jose Padua: How the Gardener of Sorrows Tends to the Sadness of Things
I tend this landscape of terrible sadness because it is my duty to bring order to this garden of loss, to pull out the weeds that crowd out the flowers … Continue reading
