I’m no poet, but a reader of both poetry and the news. Sometimes they don’t seem so far apart. Here, a found poem, based on excerpts from original reporting in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune. Continue reading
Just back from seeing “I Am Not Your Negro” at the Gene Siskel Film Center (highly recommended), I’m pondering, not for the first time, how history is created and shaped. In the true sense, history is, of course, what has happened. But those who tell the narrative get to define the narrative, so history as we know it can be quite different from the actual events that happened.
This is nothing new, of course. Those who die in battle don’t own the narrative of war. Those who hold power have the luxury of being able to tell their version of events and have that telling accepted as authoritative. There’s nothing inherently sinister in this, just, perhaps…distorting.
What has me pondering this is a segment in “I Am Not Your Negro” where Baldwin (whose writings are narrated by Samuel L. Jackson) declares that so much has been said about author/playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s meeting with Robert F. Kennedy that Baldwin feels compelled to address what really happened. Long story short, in a meeting to discuss civil rights and race relations, Hansberry was so disappointed and disheartened by Kennedy’s response that at one point she verbally dressed him down, then walked out of the room. Continue reading
"April is the cruellest month, ..."
Nearly every year on April 1, I re-read T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” It’s one of my favorite poems, and while I pay homage to it by quoting and requoting lines from it in conversation year-round, I also like to sit down and read it through periodically. The opening line, quoted above, is of course why I choose April 1 for this pleasure. (Also, April is National Poetry Month, so there’s another reason, though not the one that drives me.)
It feels like spring today in my part of Chicagoland, and over on Twitter I see people on the West Coast preparing to head out to their farmer’s markets. So now I want to be at mine.
Unfortunately, it’s only mid-February, and here in the Midwest we won’t see a farmer’s market for months to come. Memorial Day, where are you?!
I want sunshine and rows of fresh produce and flowers—lettuce and spinach, strawberries, live plants for the garden. I want the party atmosphere and the fun of seeing friends and neighbors out and about. Continue reading
The year is 1914. Three sisters are driving a carriage down the street in Paterson, N.J., when an automobile appears and barrels straight into them, overturning their carriage, breaking it apart, and pinning them beneath it. When passersby scramble to right the vehicle and help free the sisters, oen of the sisters confronts the automobile driver and demands reimbursement for the damage done to the carriage.
Do you have a love-hate relationship with Valentine’s Day? I’ve always been at least a bit conflicted about it. I’m all for love, and showing people that you love them, but celebrating a single day when that’s expected is problematic for me in a couple of ways:
Rather than celebrate Valentine’s Day, I’d prefer to fill the world with random acts of kindness every day of the year—kindness both toward the people we love and toward total strangers. Here are some ideas: Continue reading