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Rise Like Lions: The Role Of Artists In A Time Of War

An Interview With Howard Zinn

We’re fooling ourselves if we think that, because we don’t have a totalitarian system or a military dictatorship, we have a real democracy with free elections. How hypocritical it is of the United States to demand that other countries have free elections, when we ourselves have elections that are not free.

A Story About The General

Every hour or so I take a break and go out to the garage. Our sixteen-year-old cat is curled on a blanket there. He has an awkward cast on one of his hind legs. I broke the leg three days ago when I accidentally backed over him with my car.

Two Essays

Having failed to pay the rent for three months, my mother, my little brother, and I came home to find an eviction notice on our trailer. The front door was barred.

Sunbeams

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

Philip Roth

Jane

Once, while passing notes during a chemistry lecture, Jane and I decided we would each write on a piece of paper what articles of clothing we had not taken off on our last date. When we unfolded each other’s notes, we had both written the same thing: socks.

Weapons In The War For Human Kindness

Why David Budbill Sits On A Mountaintop And Writes Poems

Leading up to the war, I doubted the value of anything but antiwar poetry. I thought all my nature poems were . . . well, stupid. But the moment the antiwar movement failed and the bombing began, I knew how important poems about birds and trees and loneliness and sex and food and joy were. I knew those little poems were weapons in the war for human kindness.