Jose Padua: The Color of Bourbon and Other Observations on the Landscape of the Valley Where We Live
. This past Saturday, Heather, Maggie, Julien, and I were going south on Route 11 just outside of downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia. We were there for a quick, cheap, winter getaway … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Sailing with Marcus Aurelius on an Ash Wind
Something is exquisitely compatible about sailing and Marcus Aurelius’s admonition to perform each act as if it were your last. The Stoic emperor of Rome is one of the few … Continue reading
Paula Marie Coomer: Why Vegan?
My husband Phil and I chose to go vegan in 2012 after two years of vegetarianism and after viewing a film called Forks over Knives. This documentary made famous The … Continue reading
Video: Claude Monet painting the lily pond (rare footage)
This is the only known film footage of the French Impressionist Claude Monet, made when he was 74 years old, painting alongside a lily pond in his garden at Giverny. … Continue reading
Education as Workforce Development: The Horror
Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
Scott Walker: We don’t need no higher education (photo courtesy of Slate) W.J. Astore A strong trend in higher education today is to sell…
Andy Piascik: Helen Keller the Radical
Travel north from Bridgeport through Fairfield to Sport Hill Road in the small, upscale town of Easton, Connecticut and you eventually come to Helen Keller Middle School. Go west a … Continue reading
Video: Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker — “Down Home Shakedown”
1960 harmonica jam session. If you love the blues, this performance is not to be missed. The harmonica, also called French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, was developed in Europe … Continue reading
Video: Philip Levine reads “What Work Is”
Philip Levine reads his work at the AFL-CIO on Nov. 15, 2011. Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Midwinter
for all the trouble we go to to get the news on the lawn how we brave the strange wind in the linden tree brave the occasional black ice brave … Continue reading
Robert Reich: How the Trade Deals Boost the top 1% and Bust the Rest
Suppose that by enacting a particular law, we’d increase the U.S.Gross Domestic Product. But almost all that growth would go to the richest 1 percent. The rest of us could … Continue reading
Jose Padua: In These Insufferable Dreams
In these insufferable dreams I am becalmed by sweet monsters of joy—unfamiliar faces that move with jagged motions as in an old film, color photographs pulled from a wrinkled envelope … Continue reading
W.J. Astore: Your Wish Is My Commando
Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
W.J. Astore Privatization of war is making it far easier for America’s imperial state to wage endless war throughout the world. Consider the case…
Jane Lazarre: Once White in America — Raising Black Sons in a White Country
For Adam and Khary Black bodies swingin’ in the summer breeze strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees It was 1969 and 1973, both times in early fall, when I … Continue reading
Abby Martin: How Exceptionalism Fuels America’s Gun Massacres
We recently passed the second anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty helpless children and six staff members were gunned down in cold … Continue reading →