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Fresh Paint

Father never sold a single painting. He gave them away. He walked the streets in the early morning haze, avoiding crowds and lighted avenues, and handed his work to a face he admired. He never gave his work to anyone he knew, only strangers.

Sunbeams

Hell is made up of yearnings. The wicked don’t roast on beds of nails; they sit on comfortable chairs and are tortured with yearnings.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Utne Reader’s 1990 Alternative Press Award For Best Essays And Criticism

Idols

Bob Dylan, the Holy Blessed Virgin Mary, J. Pierpont Morgan

Sunbeams

Heaven and Hell are in the present moment, and we are either in Heaven or Hell as we live out our lives each day.

Charles Scot Giles

The White Guitar

In fourth grade, after the bra-and-girdle notebook affair, we all fell in love with Julia Harris. By “we” I mean the foreign boys in Madame Bouvet’s class, and also Pascal Fourtané, the only French boy we foreigners hung out with.

Friend Of The Sun

My Eros Is Crucified

During a time of intolerance when even the children killed for righteousness and peace, Eros descended, wandering among his children of the flesh. They knew him not.

The Ethics Of Photography

An Interview With John Rosenthal

It’s hard not to see that a photograph is an act of aggression, no matter who is taking it. You’re stopping people from the flow of their lives, you’re cropping them from the space in which they live and have their being, you’re juxtaposing them with something that they didn’t know they were next to.

Plain And Simple: A Journey To The Amish

I had always devalued Hestia, the peaceful goddess of the hearth. I thought poor, dull Hestia, the ugly duckling goddess, was stuck by the hearth, while my favorites, Athena and Artemis, were out there in the world, slaying dragons. But when I learned that the Latin word for hearth is focus, something clicked.