Anthony Bourdain: Don’t Eat Before Reading This (1999)
The New Yorker: Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Time Beyond Memory
. It’s rainy here in southern France, and chilly. The sky is the color of winter, and a fitful sun keeps popping in and out of mountains of black rain-bloated … Continue reading
Molly Fisk: Let Me Call You Sweetheart
Yesterday a young man called me sweetheart and then widened his eyes and asked “Is that OK, to call you sweetheart? I call everyone I like sweetheart, even the men.” … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: To mourn the man by name
Guillaume Apollinaire As we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, it is easy to think of all that as distant. Distant and perhaps overwhelming with its … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Need To Know Why
. I thought I wanted to become a philosopher when I went to college. I signed up for an introductory course and found myself sitting in a large hall with … Continue reading
Molly Fisk: Nine Short Lives
One of my cats just jumped to the floor from the bathroom sink, where he’d been sipping drops of leftover water, and made a very loud thump. I looked up … Continue reading
Dawn Potter: Lost Time
In “my dream about time,” the poet Lucille Clifton writes of “a woman unlike myself” who “is running down the long hall of a lifeless house.” I am fifty-two years … Continue reading
Pema Chödrön: The Wisdom of No Escape
There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of … Continue reading
Kayla DeVault: Native and European—How Do I Honor All Parts of Myself?
Learning about my roots has helped me understand intergenerational trauma and cultural resilience related to my genetics. . One memory comes to me like a photo. It’s a snapshot of … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: A Ride in Gatsby’s Car
When it’s raining out, houses have a different sound. The door isn’t crisp when it shuts, it thuds softly, and it makes you feel connected to whoever is moving through … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Pillars
There’s a blaze of light In every word, It doesn’t matter which you heard, The holy or the broken – Hallelujah! Leonard Cohen There were two holy places … Continue reading
Tom Engelhardt: In Praise of Teachers
At almost 74, of all the people in my life, it may be the teachers I remember most vividly. Mrs. Kelly, my first grade teacher (who began it all); my … Continue reading
Frida Berrigan: Growing Up With the Threat of Pervasive Violence
The Weaponization of Everyday Life Guns. In a country with more than 300 million of them, a country that’s recently been swept up in a round of protests over the … Continue reading
George Yancy: Should I Give Up on White People?
You deserve to be punished with several fists to your face! You’re nothing but a troublemaker! I’ve had enough of your Racist talk! You’d better watch what you say and … Continue reading
