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Religion and Philosophy
My Favorite Bird
I prefer the fence-colored bird / who has no song, / or none that he shares with me. // Each day at dusk he stops by to scold me. / Quietly, with a stiff hop. / He seems to know I’ve wasted the day.
April 2025
Humomism
In my writing class last Thursday, Cara said it’s a shame that the word humane has human in it, as if only humans had compassion. Then Beth said it’s a problem that human has the word man in it. So we were trying to find another word. Dan suggested “humom.” Because, at our best, we are all like mothers. So maybe that can be the name of our movement: humomism.
April 2025Hymn
We exist on the cusp of light and ruin. / Some nights I pray for time // to fold into itself, then spit us out / small and smooth like tumbled rocks, // alloys of past and present.
January 2025Walking Out
A peach-pickers’ strike, a crisis of faith, a paralyzing accident
January 2025Sunbeams
December 2024It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organized dust—ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable.
Past Futures
billy woods on the Cycles and Patterns of Human History
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.
November 2024Thoreau and Me
Thoreau was the same sort of hippie I am. The main difference between us is that I do not want my writing to be as absolutely sexless as his. I want to be a Thoreauvian capable of lust.
October 2024Grandpa’s Gavel
I take it into my hand, and / it’s now 1959 and I’m in the room: NAACP gathered, / Grandpa pounding the sounding block to call / order—here, big decisions get made; here, activism // happens, ingrained into mallet and memory
October 2024A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
October 2024Mind the Gap
Melissa Deckman on the Challenges and Strengths of Gen Z
The lion’s share of Gen Z organizing on the Left is being done by young women, because they care passionately about the issues. I think there’s less of that drive among young men. Instead there’s a sense of rootlessness. We’ll have to see whether that actually translates into conservative voting behavior or support for certain policies.
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