Wednesday – May 1 Despite incessant GOP attacks on unions with their Orwellian-named “right to work laws,” increasing income inequality may push Democrats to aggressively push for more actual workers’ rights. I was struck that Joe Biden, in announcing his presidential bid, said he was “sick of this President badmouthing unions.” Later he tweeted, “Labor […]
Monthly Archives: April 2019
A Poem for International Workers’ Day
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Report from Germany", Bertolt Brecht, unions and unionizing Comments closed
“Yellow Wallpaper” Changed Therapy
Monday The indispensable Literary Hub had a recent article on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” in which novelist Greer Macallister weighs the advantages of fiction vs. non-fiction. Given that Gilman herself was institutionalized for post-partum psychosis, why would her short story have so much more of an impact than her first-hand accounts of her ”near-catastrophic […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Charlotte Perkins Gilman, psychosis, rest cure, Therapy, Yellow Wallpaper Comments closed
Alone on the Surface of a Turning Planet
Spiritual Sunday Reprinted from April 15, 2012 The Gospel reading for today’s Episcopalian/Anglican liturgy is the very human story of Thomas, who refused to believe reports that Jesus was alive. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand […]
Ten Years of Literary Blogging
Friday Unreal though it seems to me, tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. To mark the occasion, I scrolled back through the archives to see how it has evolved over the course of the decade. Although there have been a few changes (more on those in a moment), for the most part it […]
Cataract Surgery: See Better, Lear
Thursday I am undergoing a second cataract surgery today and so am reposting the essay I wrote following my first (successful) surgery. I don’t expect to re-experience the same mixed feelings that I described two years ago, but dramas that feature sharp objects poked into people’s eyes still seem relevant. This essay is not for […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, cataract surgery, King Lear, Marlon James, Oedipus, Sophocles, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Game of Thrones Captures Our Politics
Wednesday I’m not the best person to be writing on Game of Thrones since I’ve only read the first novel while watching none of the series. I am, however, somewhat of an expert on how societies use fantasy to process pressing concerns, and I taught the first volume of George Martin’s series in an American […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Elizabeth Warren, George Martin, Newt Gingrich, Polarized politics Comments closed
Libraries, Critical to Democracy
Tuesday Today’s post is a belated celebration of Library Week (April 7-13), which generated several articles worthy of mention. In a substantive New Review of Books essay (and what essay in that august publication is ever non-substantive?), Sue Halpern reviews several books about public libraries. I particularly liked an observation drawn both from her personal […]
Grendel Violence in Sri Lanka
Monday Often, following mass killings such as occurred yesterday in Sri Lanka, I turn to Beowulf since few works understand the horrors of internecine violence so well. Beowulf was already on my mind as friends have been sending me word of new discoveries about the poem, and now we see killer trolls once again on […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Beowulf, Beowulf poet, mass killings, Sri Lankan Easter massacres Comments closed
