Michael Simms: Trigger Warning | Old White Guy Talks About Racism
White people don’t spend a lot of time talking about racism. Right-wingers dismiss racism as a talking point that black people use to get special treatment while left-leaning white people simply state that racism is an evil tendency among other white people, but not themselves.
Baron Wormser: A Poetry Proposal
There is no shortage of poems and no shortage of strategies to deliver the poems. The failing lies in our wariness. It’s true: to embrace poetry is to embrace a degree of uncertainty. Yet what else is life?
Frida Berrigan: Saving our schools starts with spending less on the military
Public schools have become society’s safety nets, and they are suffering for it. Imagine if we invested in them rather than war.
Paul Christensen: Earth Household
As the world rages to our east, and the fires flare up in Arizona, we have the first signs of spring – dark green spikes, crumbly surfaces around certain roots, … Continue reading
Michael Luong: Art and Identity on the Spectrum
In observance of Autism Acceptance Month, we asked four illustrators on the autism spectrum to create a self-portrait of themselves. We asked one simple question: As a creative on the autism spectrum, what’s something you would like others to know?
George Yancy: If the State of the World Makes You Want to Scream, You’re Not Alone
We must face the weight of such social evils and be prepared to also face the ways in which we are complicit with them, especially when we are often indifferent.
Rebecca Gordon: Confessions of a Failed Tax Resister
I knew that the IRS wasn’t visiting me as part of an audit of my returns, since I hadn’t filed any for eight years. My partner and I were both informal tax resisters — she, ever since joining the pacifist Catholic Worker organization; and I, ever since I’d returned from Nicaragua in 1984. I’d spent six months traveling that country’s war zones as a volunteer with Witness for Peace.
Mike Vargo: Going Big | Personal Identity and Higher Causes
I was not expecting to walk into a dogfight that morning. The time was shortly before noon on a clear, crisp Sunday in November. I had come to the Goodwill … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Hinge of Summer’s Door
The vernal equinox came and went, like a cat creeping over the newly sprouted heads of anonymous weeds. You hardly knew, unless you were listening to NPR, that such an … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Portrait of the Artist | James Dickey
He liked one phrase especially, “every word is a sunken Atlantis.” It said a lot about the way poetry functioned –every word in lyric was attached to a root mass of meanings, associations, feelings.
Doug Anderson: Ukraine, Hypocrisy, and That Thing With Feathers
Because of my angry response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have been accused of hypocrisy. How can I criticize Russia, I am asked, after all the damage my … Continue reading
Jane Braxton Little: Whiplashed
Hotter days and hotter nights have corkscrewed our weather patterns into spiraling extremes, leaving entire regions around the world jerked from the hottest temperatures they’ve known to the coldest, from devastating fires to disastrous floods. This is uncharted territory and, scientists say, an all-too-grim preview of the future we’re creating for ourselves.
Tom Engelhardt: Cold War II or World War III?
Given our world, we should all probably be in the streets now. I mean, here we are heading into Cold War II, while facing the possibility of World War III on a planet that, thanks to the way we live and produce energy, is heading for hell.
Ruth King: A Journey From Rage to Mindfulness
An approach to examining systems, navigating emotional distress, and increasing social harmony.
Vox Populi 