“Nazi Medicine.”

I received the following the other day in an email sent to me from one of the finest educational organizations I know, the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. It was originally an essay published on The Huffington Post. It’s a powerful piece of writing, and I wanted to share it with you. Feel free [...]

Playing at war.

Not sure what to think about this.  You tell me…
Military enthusiasts begin re-enacting the Vietnam War
BOALSBURG, Pa. (AP) 17 August – The dirt paths that lead to Alpha Company’s field headquarters are lined with overgrown grass and weeds. A canvas tent is protected by machine guns, sandbags and Army-green storage boxes.  And lurking somewhere outside [...]

“Learning from Harry Patch.”

by Belinda Webb
(Guardian/UK) August 6 – Today is the day that Harry Patch, having lived 111 years on the earth to become last surviving “Tommy” of the first world war, is laid to rest in Wells, Somerset.
Like Henry Allingham, who died aged 113 just weeks ago, Harry kept silent for over eight decades about the [...]

Missing the wonder.

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Geez, FORTY YEARS?  Earlier this summer, I was just feeling middled-aged.  Now I just feel old.
If you’re around my age or older, you remember this moment.  It’s one of the defining historical moments of our generation.  It’s one of those “I remember where I was [...]

Poem.

From An Astronaut’s Spouse
I could have sought by wit or wile
Your bright dream to dim. And yet
If I’d swayed you with a smile
My reward would be regret.
So, for once, you shall not hear
Of the tears, unbidden, welling;
Or the nighttime stabs of fear.
These, this time, are not for telling.
Take my silence, though intended;
Fill it with the [...]

Dear Pat Buchanan:

The other night on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, you went off on yet another long-winded rant about affirmative action and  Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the death of white male privilege in America.
As part of that rant, you mentioned the idea that “white people [mainly white MEN] built this [...]

“Is the United States a Christian nation? Let’s look at the Bible…”

by Richard T. Hughes
(Philadelphia Inquirer) July 12 – Newt Gingrich has news for Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, whose recent book, The Great Awakening, proclaimed the demise of the Christian Right:
“Christian America” is alive and well.
Gingrich has created an organization called Renewing American Leadership, dedicated to the work that Jerry Falwell [...]

Remember.

Twenty years ago today.

Happy (human rights hero) birthday.

Happy birthday to Pete Seeger, who turns 90 today.
UPDATE: An essay on why Pete deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

What I thought about at Meeting yesterday.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the infamous massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Yesterday was the fourteenth anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Like you, I remember both of these days very clearly.  I remember first the feelings of bewilderment and confusion, then sadness, then anger, then total [...]

Where empires go to die.

So much for the prospects for a scaling back of the so-called “war on terror”…
Officials: Obama OK’s more Afghanistan troops

WASHINGTON (AP) February 17 – Defense and congressional officials say President Barack Obama has approved an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday or [...]

“Obama would do well to learn from WWII.”

Tuskegee Airmen witnessed Allies’ moral failure
by Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
The invitation to tomorrow’s inauguration sent to members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black units of World War II pilots, is an important reminder of the long road America has traveled from the era of segregation to the election [...]

Revising and extending my remarks…

… from Meeting for Worship yesterday. 
Really extending.
[Today] my students and colleagues and I all get a day off from school to celebrate the commemoration of the anniversary of the birth of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  On Tuesday, by administrative edict, all school work will come to a close at around 11:30 am [...]

Puttin’ on Ayers.

Sixties Radicals Are Back. But Why?
by Johann Hari
(The Independent/UK) November 17 – Their story seems strange even after all this time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, small posses emerged from among the most privileged young people in Europe and America and took up arms against the society their parents had built. They bombed [...]

Support your local COs.

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day.
I also recently found out that May 15th is International Conscientious Objectors Day.  But I don’t feel like waiting that long.
Iraq Vet Says He Won’t Return
(Corvalis Gazette-Times) November 11 – When Benjamin Lewis was 17, he joined the Marine Corps’ delayed entry program, looking for a new direction in his life. He [...]

Happy Veteran’s Day.

Honor their service today: pray for those serving now, that they will all be safe and HOME soon. 
And that, when they do get home, we do a better job of taking care of them than we have in the past.  There was a story on the PBS News Hour  program last night, about an [...]

Cool First Day sounds.

Will.i.am: “It’s A New Day.”

R.I.P. Studs Terkel.

Broadcaster, activist, author, and historian of the common person Studs Terkel died today. 
He was 96.
An American treasure.  And one of my heroes.
“When an elder dies, it is as if a whole library has burned down.”
- African proverb 
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Happy Constitution Day!

I’m kind of swamped at work this week, so I don’t have time to construct an original essay about this day or this document, even though there are many, many things I could say, even if I am “an anti-American radical.”  This piece will have to do, and it does express something I have been feeling [...]

Poem.

Breath of Life

(A poem inspired by the story told in October, 2001 on NPR by a Native American iron worker who had helped to build the World Trade Center, who was then called in to help remove the remains of the Twin Towers after September 11, 2001)
 
We breathe in their bones,
Their pulverized souls fill our [...]