Today is only a day. It is Saturday, the 4th of July weekend, and like every other day it has filled with moments linking up into hours, holding people and motion – holding change. This is how it went. Sun rays angled across the morning sky. I woke with two friends on my mind – two friends who are too close to death. Tom, a remarkable and kind educational leader, is here… Read More
I have a friend who lives with chronic pain. He has Rheumatoid Arthritis. The other day we were sitting drinking tea. It was the first time he told me of the RA diagnosis he received last December. “It hits like a train,” he said. “But, man is it ever teaching me about making choices.” “Three things,” he said. “First, it doesn’t feel fair. It isn’t fair, and it is what’s going on,… Read More
My friend Murry is in a protracted conversation with esophageal cancer. He knows all too well that his condition didn’t come from nowhere. The president spoke yesterday to matters in the Middle East – to the changes signified with the public uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. He spoke to Israel and Palestine– to that protracted conversation. We all know that none of that came from nowhere. Today I took a photo of… Read More
Obama released his birth certificate. Kate and William finally walked the aisle. Then the phone rings yesterday. One of my dearest of dears doesn’t know what to do. She is a hair’s breadth from ending it all. They are unmistakable when they show up, these things that are more important. Yesterday, regarding this week’s focus on the part of the news media Dan Rather said Come on, gang. Really? or something to… Read More
…Posting this on Monday morning in Malta — Qawra, to be exact — in a piazza at the edge of St Paul’s Bay with free public wifi access. Only took me three days to find this place (sort of a miracle, really) and only a 2 mile walk from the hotel. Easter came and went. The wind and surf were and continue impressively high. It’s not quite tourist season here, which is… Read More
If we’re ever going to begin to grapple with the problems we have collectively,we’re going to have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level. Wilma Mankiller (1945 – 2010) Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Today I sat with two Elders in my community – two Grandmothers. Both of these designations, elder and grandmother, carry ambiguous valence in a culture (mine) so taken with… Read More
Back in the 2000, my friend Amy Schutzer published a novel she titled Undertow http://www.calyxpress.org/books.html. She considered another title: What Version of the Truth Do We Tell? I’ve just finished the first draft of 100 Voices: Americans Talk about Change. Really! The first draft toward publication in September, 2011. That’s amazing enough, but the reason I mention it here has to do with truth. It has to do with the incredible candor… Read More
I don’t remember exactly the year. Maybe it was 1979. Probably summer, but more likely spring since summer in Baton Rough, LA can be beyond the capacity of all but its own hearty inhabitants to survive. There was the protection of the stately oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Whatever the season it was mild enough to leave untroubled the breathlessly fine fabrics and careful protocol involved to make the wedding as glitteringly… Read More
I’m not sure the first time I realized this day, March 4, is the only day of the year that doubles as a poem. Poetry is, by nature an illusive combination of feeling and fact. It is mysterious, powerfully so. It is anchored in words, also pretty imprecise when it comes down to it. There is certainly reality in it; otherwise poetry would never catch our attention at all, but it’s bigger… Read More
The bald eagles are nesting in northern Wisconsin. To see them is a privilege. This sense of privilege – really, of awe – is not new in humans. And the birds deserve it. Their power and dignity, their grace and comfort with majesty can only be met with appreciation of the highest order. Then there’s everyday eagle speak. Not the famous war cry that echoes through canyons, but the way eagles chat… Read More
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