Paul Christensen: The Testament of Winter
The wind last night was fierce and numbingly cold. It moved like a carving knife through the remaining remnants of summer, easing away the reluctant last memories we have of the warm and sunny past.
Michael Simms: Blue Notes
I think of Fats Waller whose left hand leaped down the keys, showing the path for every jazz pianist who followed, including the great Art Tatum and the minor Billy Joel.
Gerry LaFemina: Collection
In my life I’ve gathered maybe five perfect rocks. It isn’t that they were smooth or handsomely speckled with rare minerals. No, they were often misshapen, pitted, easily forgettable.
Paul Christensen: Election Terrors
No one seems to know what to think or how to feel right now. The stress is building and the threats to this election are so poisonous, it makes you quiver with fear.
Tom Engelhardt: Beyond Our Control
It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across country with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment.
Andrea Mazzarino: How the War Came Home, Big Time
For the Proud Boys to say that they reject racism and venerate housewives did little more than provide them with a veneer of social acceptability, even as they planned armed counter-rallies in progressive cities like Providence and Portland with the explicit purpose of inciting violence among Black Lives Matter protesters and their allies.
Vincent Van Gogh: Art and Soul
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.
Rebecca Gordon: Guns, Germs and Smoke
UNITE-HERE! Canvassers take on Trump in Nevada.
Tom Weis: History Will Damn Trump & Co. for Betraying the Vision of Our Founders
Healing begins with putting Trump’s exhausting psychodrama behind us and getting back to loving and caring for one another as Americans.
Paul Christensen: The October Twilight
Leaf by leaf, the sky unfolds its ancient sunlight and lets the fragments of history drift to the ground, one broken fact at a time. How difficult it is to gather up the ruins of time and try to make sense of what we are — the foreground we emerged from, the burden of our legacy as inheritors of shame and guilt.
Video: Anne Lamott | 12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing
If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
Michael Simms: Why you might be interested in my new book
Donate $20 or more to your favorite progressive cause or candidate, and Red Cedar Distribution will send you a free copy of my new collection of poems American Ash.
Gerry LaFemina: A Room for Space Agers
At a certain age I re-aimed that telescope, first, to look into the window of the young widow across the street, she who made me feel atomic.
Patricia A. Nugent: Swear to God
I’ll strive to focus on what I want rather than what I don’t want by holding the vision of a kinder, gentler leader and nation in my heart.
