Paul Christensen: A Christmas at Home
She didn’t know why, but she said she was very happy, as happy as she had ever been. She was like a voice in the midst of war, a calming, soothing voice from home. He heard the words, he was moved to tears at their affection. He had survived.
James Dubinsky: Veterans turned poets can help bridge divides
Today, there are approximately 20.17 million veterans – 7 percent of the U.S. population. That’s more than 20 million stories, along with the stories of their loved ones. Sometimes poetry is the most effective way to capture both the ambiguity and the story.
George Lakey: As the US empire declines, what openings exist for progressive movements?
Hard as it may be to see beyond the chaos and suffering in Afghanistan, the larger picture reveals real opportunities for social change.
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle): The Walls Do Not Fall
tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,
yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what for?
Michael Simms: The Four Coups of Joe Medicine Crow
According to the Crow tradition of counting coups, a warrior can earn the title by completing four coups or deeds in battle. The four coups are: lead a war party into battle, sneak into an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, take away an enemy’s weapon, and touch an enemy without being harmed.
Frida Berrigan: ‘I Ain’t Marching Anymore’ chronicles 260 years of war resistance and conscientious objection
From the American Revolution through the Global War on Terror, author Chris Lombardi tells the inspiring stories of people who refused to kill.
Josephine Baker: Siren of the Resistance
Iconic entertainer of the Jazz Age, famous for her risqué performances, Josephine Baker responded to the start of World War II by becoming a spy for the French Resistance. Known as the “Creole Goddess” of France, Baker used her celebrity to gain access to high-ranking Axis officials.
W. D. Ehrhart: Paul Fussell — A Remembrance
While Fussell wrote on a wide variety of subjects over his long life—ranging from Augustan humanism, Samuel Johnson, and Kingsley Amis to the 2nd Amendment, the Indianapolis 500, and travel in between-the-wars Europe—war, the irony of war, the suffering and lunacy and permanent damage of war, the unfairness of war, lay at the heart of his writing and of his being.
Emma Parker: This young woman created 784 paintings while hiding from the Nazis
Together these sequential images tell a family history, focussing on a central character called Charlotte Kann, a semi-autobiographical version of Salomon herself. They document Charlotte’s development as an artist, her struggles against madness and her first love affair, all painted against a backdrop of increasingly violent Nazi rule.
Sandy Solomon: Reading Suite Française
“Remove your yellow star.
Head for Switzerland or try
for Nice. Don’t write your will
Don’t imagine what the Germans feel.”
Chris Hedges: War and Memory
I asked my grandmother after he left what was wrong with him. “The war,” she said acidly.
Harry Blain: American Concentration Camps
When human beings are framed as a national security threat, barbed wire is the next logical step. But unlike during the Japanese internment, today there’s high-level political resistance.
Drummond Allison: Come, let us pity not the dead but Death
Come, let us pity not the dead but Death
For He can only come when we are leaving,
He cannot stay for tea or share our sherry.
Sandy Solomon: Sophie Scholl from diary, letters, pamphlets
21-year-old Scholl, with her older brother Hans, was guillotined on 22 February 1943 for being part of the White Rose, a group of students arrested for distributing anti-Nazi flyers. — … Continue reading
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