For several years I’ve been keeping track of the books I read. In 2020, I did pretty well, kicking it off with an enormous biography of Beethoven, byJan Swafford. I don’t look for takedowns in biographies; but spare me the hagiography. I’m an American who lived through the second half of the twentieth century; I’m … Continue reading My 2021 Booklist is a Big Bust, But Don’t Blame Frederick Douglass
The truth is out there. But so are lies. This week, some pieces of the truth were emerging in a Minnesota courtroom. Here we pass that by with bowed head. Other pieces, one being an enormous cargo ship, were emerging, or not, from the Suez Canal, and I can’t elide them. Or one piece in … Continue reading Learning How Today’s World Works (& Doesn’t) Without Leaving Home
This is personal for me. Also religious. The Quaker Meeting I attend is in the country between Burlington & Pittsboro NC. Those cities and my home town, Durham, is served by the contaminated Haw river. And I lived/worked in Fayetteville (near Fort Bragg) for more than a decade, where the Haw (called there the Cape … Continue reading Drowning In Our Own Dirty Water
It’s Opening Day, and I have a confession to make. It’s not an April Fool. Here it is: it’s Opening Day, and I don’t care. And I’m not sure why. Is it part of the pandemic hangover, part of the “Old Normal” that was ripped away from us a year ago, now lost somewhere amid … Continue reading My Opening Day Confession
This remarkable tribute is by Mark Schwartz, an attorney from Bryn Mawr PA. It is a remarkable tribute to the work and memory of a photographer friend, Christopher Cardozo, who in turn had made a career of preserving and paying tribute to the work of an earlier pioneering photographer-ethnographer. It was so striking i am … Continue reading A Guest Post: Preserving the Work of a Photographer Who Documented Native Americans