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I too am fascinated by journalism and humbled by the contributions of courageous journalists at home and on the front lines of conflict. Today we live in a small small world where risks soar higher and faster than the stakes. Amidst the firestorms of controversy set by the arson(s) in power, who light fires for the pleasure of watching them burn, we need to halt the destruction. To that end, I have not lost faith in the power of a free press. We must now ferret out fake news and debunk conspiracy theories to clear the smoke and mirrors. To reveal injustice and ignorance, I put my money on the skills and integrity of investigative journalists to restore our ethical and humanitarian values.  Read More »

Sometimes I imagine a tattoo entwined with nocturnal leopards, tawny cheetahs, a scarlet macaw or lilac breasted roller, with a green tree python slithering up my right bicep. But a few days ago, I leaned towards getting the rhomboids between my shoulder blades inked with mayday, mayday, mayday in a gothic font, alternating black and blood red. You see I spent all last month procrastinating a catalyst for my April post. I pondered right past the rise of Easter, the negativity of Tax Day and the uncertain future of Earth Day, until I whipped up an epiphany. May Day! But by the time I developed a thread to twine that pagan celebration of delight into a coherent piece, even that slipped by. At last – I eek out some ink. Read More »

Tonight when darkness falls, I pull on my black hooded raincoat and set off in the dense fog to clear my head. Do I strain to find truth through a veil of water droplets dancing in the atmosphere? Or do I suspend my disbelief and glimpse seven Earth-size planets recently discovered that orbit a tiny star? Who are we this spring Equinox when day and night are of (almost) equal duration? What will tip the sail?

As my vision crystallizes, I behold a whitewashed house on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the inner sanctum of illusive diffusion, a triumvirate of witches levitates over a cauldron stirring, chanting – brewing up a batch. Read More »

Valentine – take heart. It may be the shortest month of the year, the only one that can pass without a full moon (next time 2018) but right in the middle we get to indulge the impulse of romantic love. And for the month of February we officially pay homage to the accomplishments of black men and women under the banner of Black History month. But wait! Neither love nor equality should be restricted to a single month. Can the heart handle only so much? Should we confine to 28 or 29 days our admiration for the youngest African American to win a Nobel Prize for Peace (1964) Martin Luther King, Jr., or for the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature (1993) Toni Morrison, or the first black President of the US, Barack Obama who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2009? Nobel Laureates leave a legacy for their outstanding achievements to humanity, their contributions “to benefit mankind” for all time.  Read More »

Rather than making apocalyptic predictions this week I choose to honor the spirit and dreams of Martin Luther King. Instead of dashing out to buy a pair of Trump pumps for the unfolding of the 45th inauguration (I prefer the sand between my toes), I press myself to “use time creatively” (MLK). While I while away several hours in a dark theater immersed in the lives of poets – one an anonymous bus driver, one a fugitive Nobel Prize winner – I emerge illuminated by the alchemy of imagination and the power of words. Adam Driver, the bus driver in the Jim Jarmusch film, pens with passion the minutiae of his life before setting off on his daily route through the city of Paterson, New Jersey. His self-expression, a creative fix. Fact and fiction blend in the inventive “Nerudian” film of Chilean politician and poet Pablo Neruda, an exile in his own country (1948) for his leftist leanings. His subversive poetry inspires and gives voice to the powerless.  Read More »

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. – Stephen Hawking Don’t let holiday madness hold you captive or masquerade as a temple of gold. Put away your plastic and perform an act of… too short for excerpt, but Read More anyway »

Canadian poet, singer, songwriter, novelist and painter Leonard Cohen releases his final elegiac album You Want it Darker two weeks before his death in Los Angeles at 82, on November 7. The world mourns his loss and pays tribute to the work of a luminary. On November 14, the brightest super moon since 1948 glows high in the sky. But simultaneously America’s game of truth or dare implodes. Lunacy replaces integrity, faux news tweets and chameleon promises go viral. All that glitters is not gold. The value of truth plummets, dignity and equality burn at the stake and as for the future of humanity – all bets are off. So you want it darker or brighter? How do you like your Hallelujahs? I’ll take Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (5 years in the making) any day, any night, in any moonlight. Read More »

I know you think I’m going to talk about Bob Dylan – but I’m not – because he’s not. But there is a lot of debris “Blowin’ in the Wind” surrounding the announcement from the Swedish Academy of Dylan’s five decade creative contribution to the world. If you find Dylan’s genre crossover “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” an odd choice for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, you might consider the irony of Alfred Nobel’s premature obituary published in 1888. Mortified by the prospect of being remembered as the merchant of death for his invention of dynamite and profiting from the sale of arms, Nobel decided to bequeath his fortune to the establishment of “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and/or Medicine, Literature and Peace. Read More »

Strange – how we discount sound in stories. No one engages with tiny black marks on a white leaf of paper. We long to glide into a world we experience – hear the crackle of the glass, the rhythm of a fetal heartbeat, the blare of a taxi horn, the rustle of scarlet silk. Seduced by the power and poetry of language, we hunger for the jolt of odd juxtapositions, to find out what happens next. But without musicality and metaphor you might as well devour a manual on how to change a tire. Words perform the magic of a wand, the precision of a scalpel, the viscosity of paint. You can hear the tinkle of the chimes, the roll of the rhymes, the chill of the drill. Without children’s laughter and sirens in the night, the warning of the wind and the click of a lock, we simply ingest facts. Read More »

I promise not to talk about politics. Instead I’m going to free-fall into paradox and quantum physics. But if you’ve been listening to the finer (original) convention speeches in the last two weeks, you have been party to the power of language, the slick pronoun pick (the intimate I, the confrontational you, the inclusive we) and the abiding nature of voice. You will have completed a crash course in Aristotle’s three appeals – logos, ethos and pathos – not to mention the synergy of three, the logic of twos and the essential nature of one. And you’ve probably figured out the most potent sentence turns out not to be the choreographed multi-clause sentence increasing in intensity, filled with proofs and turns of phrase, but the shortest one, especially when it follows the longest one. Brief ­– and straight to the heart. You will also realize a compelling argument (or story) lies not in abstract generalities and vagueness. Specific, definite, concrete language and sensory details echo long after the balloons drop. Ah, the art of persuasion. Read More »