Sandy Solomon: Beside Politics
As the train rattled towards Paris, she chatted along, like me sixteen and traveling alone. I knew to disapprove of pieds noirs, assasins (scrawled on walls or yelled by angry crowds), but … Continue reading
Maura Ives: How an American magazine helped launch one of Britain’s favorite Christmas carols
Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ didn’t begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.
Charles Davidson: Christmas Trees
TO THIS DAY I still possess the handmade Santa Claus that I cut out of lined poster board…
David Baker: Holiday Wish
a little peace, a touch of ease, another day
come round with steady light
Toi Derricotte | Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing
My mother was not impressed with her beauty;
once a year she put it on like a costume
Video: Nuisance Bear
A documentary by Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden, follows polar bears as they clash with a gaggle of tourists, wildlife officers, and the residents of a small Canadian town.
Michelle Bitting: Now at Holiday Time I Think About the Moment I Heard You Passed On
a stone’s throw from lots
where talented Sharon Tate expired and Jim Morrison
fluttered psychedelic, fiery birds rising from the boulevard
of broken wings
Julie Poole: The Underground Economy of Unpaid Care
More than 40 million people provide unpaid care for adults. My mother was one of them.
Wally Swist: Honoring the Moment
The preparation is essential
to the beginning of the everyday
Mike Males: Why Conservative Parts of the U.S. Are So Angry
Republican America is poorer, more violent, and less healthy than Democratic America. But Republicans’ blame is misplaced.
Barbara Crooker: Star of Wonder, Star of Light
It’s Christmas, the year before the accident, when the earth
still seemed fixed. My husband and children are hanging
lights on the big pine tree
Sonali Kolhatkar: Abolishing the Nation’s Largest Jail System
L.A. County activists are working to replace violent jails with mental health facilities, and to reallocate funding from incarceration toward social services.
Lasse Söderberg: A part of America
They are watching us in their field glasses.
We are watching them in our field glasses.
Danusha Laméris: Thinking
Don’t you wish they would stop, all the thoughts
swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers
tapping their way across the stage?
