War

Lesson Plan

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:45 -0400

The Right and I agree on the potential of universities as a space in which students develop ideas that can transform the world. The difference is, they want to stamp it out, and I want to encourage it.

Sleeping Children

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

What was happening in and to Gaza was not really about democracy at all—or any kind of universal, God-given values. It was simply about power.

One Landscape Divided

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

President Trump’s increased militarization of the US border with Mexico is certainly a step beyond those taken by the past few administrations—and in line with the family-separation policies the first Trump White House deployed. But the detainment of people fleeing violence, poverty, and persecution is not unique to this moment.

The Golden Door

mcdermon@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Our nation’s founders attained political power by invading this land, killing most of the people who were already living in it, stealing large swaths of land from other countries, and then saying, “This is ours, and no one else can come in.” It’s hard to defend that moral claim.

Graffiti

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A tag on a dumpster, poetry in an outhouse, Viking runes in an underground tomb

Hometown Heroes

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

“White people have it so good, they sign up to die in another country,” she said.

I thought that was pretty grim. I mean, there are such things as heroes. But it’s hard to imagine a real war with people who look like Jack and Matty. The only war I ever hear about is the one my mom was born into and grew up in the aftermath of, the Korean War. The one she uses every excuse to squeeze into a conversation. Every chance she gets, she tells me how rough it was then and how much better we have it now.

Back Cover

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

Art During Wartime

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

In opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian performing artists are reasserting their national identity. When I photographed the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, they were rehearsing the works of Stankovych and Barvinsky, Ukrainian composers who’d been banned during the Soviet era. This declaration of Ukrainian culture was considered so important that fighting-aged male symphony members were permitted to leave the country when the symphony took up residency in Germany.

Timing

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

A broken clock, a chance encounter, a long-distance relationship

Past Futures

dgmlewis@gmail.com — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:00:00 -0400

It just takes the right person, at the right time, to light the right spark and make what previously would have seemed impossible the law of the land. When I was a child, Somalia had a government. They might not have one again for the rest of my life.

The Basement

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Teenage parties, lost treasures, wartime bomb shelters

I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated

lm2534@hotmail.com — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400

If you walk the stations of the cross, most tour guides / will politely point out the spot where they think Jesus / may have fallen or the spot where / he may have met his mother.

Uniforms

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

For a job at Burger King, a prison in North Carolina, a girls’ school in Iran

The Nail Salon

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:05:00 -0400

Some people remember childhood bike rides and ice-cream sundaes; I remember acetone and moon-slivers of nails.

The American Dream

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0400

An Indian immigrant, an oil-company man, a bicycle-riding nomad

A Thousand Words

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 04:00:00 -0400

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

A Sandwich Is A Concept

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:00:00 -0500

Our biggest fear was dogs. Ronnie and I looked up dog facts like maniacs. Can dogs smell through plastic? Does the USPS use drug dogs? How do you trick drug dogs? How effective are drug dogs? Are drug dogs a scam that the government uses to justify illegal searches?

Anniversaries

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Of a fifty-year marriage, of an immigrant’s journey, of a terrorist attack

We Fools

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 05:00:00 -0500

When Nonna Venere visited, she arrived by train like in a movie, stepping down from the first-class compartment enveloped by smoke, wearing a cloche with a veil. She had four large suitcases and no gifts.

Market Street

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0400

The sea of people looked like a great heartbroken circus, wild living art, motley and stylish, old and young, lots of Buddhists, people from unions and churches and temples, punks and rabbis and aging hippies and nuns and veterans — God, I love the Democratic Party — strewn together on the asphalt lawn of Market Street.

Missing Ghosts

ebrina@uno.edu — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

My father tells me about the ghosts. He tells me about lying on his stomach in a trench and falling asleep and hearing the voice of a friend who had just been killed shouting, “Brina, look out!”

One Of Us

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

It’s important to compare things that are pretty alike, like humans and chimps, with their evolutionary ties, but when you find similarities between things that are ordinarily seen as very different, like humans and ants — that’s where the new ideas come from.

Sunbeams

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400

It is an illusion to suppose that a dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and, above all, unsatisfied and fearful men.

L. Susan Stebbing

June 2019

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Featuring Stephen R. Schwartz, Parker J. Palmer, Gloria Baker Feinstein, and more.

excerpted from The Diary Of A Young Girl

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400

One good thing has come out of this: as the food gets worse and the decrees more severe, the acts of sabotage against the authorities are increasing.

Big Lies

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Hitler could only make angry arguments. Trump, too, can’t make an appeal to reason. All he can do is push the anger button and throw abuse at people. In a sense, he is just lucky that the one thing he can do is something that resonates with a certain segment of the population.

January 2019

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Featuring Starhawk, Frances Lefkowitz, Edward Tick, and more.

Stories We Keep To Ourselves

Sat, 01 Dec 2018 00:05:00 -0500

They gather in lodges, these unflinching, / gray-haired men in caps with unit insignias. / The meat loaf and gravy on styrofoam goes / mostly untouched.

All The While The Women

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Days & nights I carried two weapons everywhere. / I wore pockets of bullets / across my chest. I wasn’t / of age.

The Gettysburg Address

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.