Monthly Archives: April 2020

During Covid, Workers Must Unite

By Robin Bates | Published: April 30, 2020

On this International Workers’ Day, frontline workers are bearing the brunt on Covid-19 and public sector workers may not be far behind. Time for Shelley’s “To the Working Men of England.”

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Remembering My Son 20 Years Later

By Robin Bates | Published: April 29, 2020

Remembering my oldest son, who died 20 years ago, I turn to Shelley’s elegy for Keats.

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Dante Weighs In on Trumpian Sins

By Robin Bates | Published: April 28, 2020

Continuing assessing Trump by Dante’s criteria, he qualifies for a number of the pits in the violence and fraud circles of Inferno.

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Trump & Inferno’s 9 Circles–Pick One

By Robin Bates | Published: April 27, 2020

If Trump were to be assigned to one of Dante’s nine circles of hell, where would he end up? I set forth the possibilities.

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Mrs. Dalloway as Pandemic Novel?!

By Robin Bates | Published: April 26, 2020

Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” may have been shaped by the 1918 pandemic, even though the illness is barely mentioned.

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Carrying a Candle against the Wind

By Robin Bates | Published: April 25, 2020

A simple Wendell Berry poem/prayer asks for help in keeping a candle alight against the wind.

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Battling Proud, Wayward Squirrels

By Robin Bates | Published: April 23, 2020

Squirrels are refusing to honor our bird feeders by staying away. Yeats describes squirrels as similarly irreverent. So do Beatrix Potter and John Blades.

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Empty Yourself, Taste Sweetness

By Robin Bates | Published: April 22, 2020

In this Rumi Ramadan poem, the body empties so that the soul may be filled.

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Manifesto for the Earth’s Future

By Robin Bates | Published: April 21, 2020

Wendell Berry’s manifesto of “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” is worth revisiting on this 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. It captures the spirit of the times.

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