“Human Sacrifice Zones” and the Moans of Pain Inaudible from the Thrones of the Mighty HISTORY, LAW, AND THE LAYERING OF HUMAN MEANING The “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge”, by Ambrose Bierce---the best writer in American history, perhpas, and the “Old Gringo” of Carlos Fuentes’s book---should annually be a required text for all U.S. citizens. It
Rise Up Children, Your Parents Will Follow THE PRISON SYSTEM, THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, THE WHOLE FUCKING SOCIAL SYSTEM IS ROTTEN This is not the BLOGessay I intended to post. I had a series of four environmental issues and environmental heroes pieces all planned out surrounding Earth Day tomorrow. I nearly posted a similar piece, as this has turned
Thank you so much for your posting. I am writing a book, Writng for ESL Students---High School and College, and want to correspond with folks who are actually grappling with these issues in various locations and cultures. My e-mail is [email protected], and I'll hope to hear from you. In any case, again, thanks for the insights and the software lead.
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And thank you, dear heart, for being willing and able to wade through the prose and pluck the plums that are there. Yum!! I'm passionate about the stories, but as in every other aspect of my life, I need a manager, an agent, partners who can help keep things on course, make sure I don't palpitate prose so purple the bruises are offputting. One woman who responded to a post said that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I hope I'm r
Thursday’s Earth Day: What are the Other 364? WHEN PSYCHOLOGY SEES ECOLOGY AS JUST MYTHOLOGY, PREPARE THE EULOGY FOR HUMANKIND The origins of the celebration of Earth Day are fantastic to remember---the culture and thought and ethos of oneness and abundance and impact, the idea that a single person might join with others to reform or otherwise
Running & Stunning & Gunning & Shunning Without Cunning Any Sense of Responsibility for the Carnage Wreaked in Our Names CRIMINAL INJUSTIC IS A SYSTEM---EITHER WE CHANGE IT, OR IT WILL CONTINUE TO EXPLODE IN OUR CHILDREN’S FACES Working as a prison guard has to be some of the most grueling and gruesome work imagineable. This would prove especi
YEAH BABY!!!!!!
If I could only read in one genre, in order to learn about life, my choice would be biography. Your enthusiastic articulation of the past, and your ability to see the relevancy of past relationships to our own interactions, is a perfect example of why. Thanks for the post.
Thank you so much for your incisive and insightful article. I am teaching English, primairly to Korean and Chinese American studnts, some of whom are ESL as well. I am finishing up a book, with three versions, for high school and junior college students primarily, about how to be successful writing English. You ideas are very exciting to me, inasmuch as they parallel my thinking in most respects. Is it possible we could correspond? My e-mail is re
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Lost Lovers, Undercover Operatives Hovering SPRING AND YUM, SCANDALICIOUS HUM Angie and I met so long ago, the young man who encountered her sardonic, slender, rangy, eye-to-eye size is hardly recognizeable as a predecessor to the fellow tapping away at this text. But it was me, the bad band playing standard rock at the ‘mixer’ predictably cacophon
Kelly! Would that my content were always as snappy as my headlines. Thanks for taking a look, and keep me posted.
Sherye!! One of my favorite sayings is "that there are things about which reasonable minds may differ." That being said, part of the point, to me, of writing generally and of writing here in particular is to encourage conversations that are based on reasoning as well as feeling, on logic as well as subjectivity. Thus, I hope you'll think a minute: I certainly did not state, and did not want to imply that "all illegal drugs are OK," nor
“The Time Has Come to Take a Stand” THE LIFE OF THE SOUTH ALIVE IN ONE WOMAN’S TALE She was eight years old, forty five years ago, when she dropped the bag of cotton she was picking from her shoulder and declaimed to her mother, “Mama, when I grow up I’m gonna get me an education.” The coterie of her eleven brothers and sisters who were presen
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And he's not even the best looking "old fart" I know. One of my friends is MHMIA(MostHandsomeManInAmerica)material. However, only a few of the friends and odd souls, who have laid their stories on my consciousness like offerings at the oracle, rival Marcus's whole life situation, in terms of comic/tragic intensity. I look forward to reading some more of your stuff when I get a breather Sunday night. Thanks for staying in touch. CFN, J<
You are a very smart cookie, as my mom used to say. Faye Coffield was one of the investigators on this case, one of two former police officers who has helped to develop the evidentiary basis for legal action. She served 22 years as a cop---some of her stories are so unbelievable, they make "NYPD Blue" seem like a commercial for Seltsin Blue Shampoo---ten of them in Atlanta, Zone 3, which was a complete nightmare(her posting there a result of her bein
For now, yes, the concluding details have to wait. But I also want to serialize things, develop somehow or other---if I'm not too old, too wordy, or too obnoxious---an audience that will let me take the stories that have come to me and offer them up to LOTS of people, in every conceivable form of transmission, from the most oral to the most hyper-technological. I just appreciate your reading them and I feel as if God enters my heart every time someth
“Drugs, Guns, and Living in America” EMBRACING HYPOCRISY WITH ALARMING ALACRITY Today, just about all the folks I encountered who spoke English as their native tongue, with the exception of clerks and others of whom I knew very little, seemed to be either drug addicts or pushers. I mention the linguistic qualifier because of the extensive cohorts of Asi
And now for something completely different!! When the Nazarene genius said to his disciples, possibly including his lover, Mary, "the kingdom of God is at hand," he very likely did not mean what most contemporary Christians receive as indoctrination about that passage. What he meant, arguably, and what makes sense to me from my study of what we can say, with all of God's gifts of wisdom and insight, actually went on in Palestine lo these many
Hey guy! You may or may not like what I'm going to tell you. I do some dream interpretation for people now and again, when there's a demand for it. Everybody has a theory about dreams of course, and I tend to go along with old Carl Jung(check him out on the web, an amazing thinker!). The way that dreams seem to me, they're basically all about the dreamer. The dark girl is your own dark feminine side, that side of EVERY man where the "
Thanks so much for posting this. Some of the most affecting video and photography in history is of the helicopter pilots who committed suicide when they hovered over the flaming reactors at Chernobyl and staved off a planetary catastrophe by dropping huge concret plugs into the irradiating inferno that consigned all of them to gruesome deaths. It gives me the willies, when I think that we're planning on building more of these things to boil water her
You know!!! I think we do see things differently. I've read the police report. I've talked with the parties involved who have evinced a willingness to talk to me. Not one reporter saw fit to check with Kareem or his family. Don't you find that a bit out of line? Just a little? Maybe it's just me. I'm going to be writing about this case, a lot, as it develops. Maybe your perspective will change as I offer more details. Maybe not. Wh
Thanks Kelly. My daugther is crazier than I am, I fear, and my son has a bigger mouth. I find myself in the unfamiliar position of counseling caution and conservatism to them, all the while praying for the dispensation that every parent wants to keep the order of the world intact for one's own seed.
Hey Sherye! It's even more personal than what you say, I think. If we open our hearts and practice the words that come through our fingers from our hearts, every corner of the universe is so thrilling and chilling at the same moment that it spills volcanic magma of magnificence, that every one of us has a place, if we would just claim it. Thanks for reading my material, and thanks for offering yours.
“Might Could” and “Maybe Should” ANOTHER ANGEL TO THE RESCUE I’m still not completely moved. My writing habit, my work habit--- teaching writing, doing community organizing and research, counseling a little here, freelancing a bit there---not to mention my dream habit all call me so, or pay me well enough these days, that I can afford to procrastinate.
My mother once said that I was intimate with the blarney stone before I was one year old. I never knew exactly how she meant "intimate", of course, until more recently. But I do like to run my mouth. I have found the comments you've written to be clear and artciculate and, at least a couple of times, witty. I guess I'm going to go read something substantive here, now, just so I can confirm that we're both 'talented writers.' Thank you.</