Browse Topics
War
The Salt Seas Of The Heart
A Tribute To Brian Doyle
You believed that everything is a form of prayer, including laughter, including tears. Yes, you were a reverential man, but you weren’t stiff or boring or preachy or dour. Your essays were both concise — often just a page in length — and lush, your sentences as intricate and twisty as plants in a terrarium. You combined prose and poem (and prayer, you said) to bear witness to the miracles around us.
September 2017Secrets Deep In Tiger Forests
Next door, in a run-down daiquiri-pink house with bedsheets instead of curtains on the windows, lived Whitey Carr, who loved to pound me every Sunday with his tiny fists. My mother said I had to feel sorry for Whitey because he’d lost his mom, and his brother, Raja, had come back crazy from the war.
March 2017On The Border
In 2015 more than a million refugees came to Europe seeking asylum. Most were fleeing the fighting in Syria and Iraq or escaping Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Bringing only what they could carry, many crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece before continuing on to wealthier countries such as Germany and Sweden.
February 2017Alternate History
When we rolled into Iraq, / newspapers predicted more / than half of us would die.
December 2016An Unlikely Friendship
An Israeli And A Palestinian Make The Case For Peace
Do not give up hope. Despite the Holocaust there is now a German ambassador in Israel, and an Israeli ambassador in Berlin. Fortunately the Palestinians didn’t kill 6 million Israelis, and the Israelis didn’t kill 6 million Palestinians. There is hope that we can reconcile, too.
October 2016The Optimism Of Uncertainty
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
October 2016New Strategy
Instead of attacking one more foreign city, hammering it into rubble, / we adopt a new strategy and start bombing with money.
August 2016Opening Night
Because the widow of the arms manufacturer / loves to listen to concertos in the evening, / the city finally has an orchestra.
June 2016Memorial Day
Our dad will not walk in the parade wearing his uniform. He declines politely every year when he is asked. . . . He says uniforms are dangerous statements, if you think about it. He says uniforms can easily confer false authority, and encourage hollow bravado, and augment unfortunate inclinations, and exacerbate violent predilections. This is how he talks. He says uniforms are public pronouncements, like parades, and we should be careful about what we say in public.
June 2016