Daily Archives: July 15, 2008

Innocence to Experience: A Micro-Story That Could Be Turned into a Triptych, by Santi Tafarella

  Beneath a dormant tree, in brown, eggshell crisp leaves, a child found a white branch with a red blossom. The branch bent in the middle, and the child, to hold it together, presented it to her mother with both … Continue reading

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“Deliverance”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  bobbing like a jug   a naked body in the river   and on its back a crow   before men were here   there were rivers   and the round eyes of birds

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“The Lord Bless Thee, and Keep Thee”: Did Leo Tolstoy, in 1902, Stumble Upon the Reason We Bless People Before Sending Them Off to War?

In Part 2 of the Gilgamesh Epic, the elders of the Mesopotamian city of Uruk send Gilgamesh on a journey to the Land of Cedars with this blessing: May Shamash [the sun god] give you your heart’s desire, may he let you see with … Continue reading

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“At the Border”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  Mexicali waters   sour with laundry suds   California aqueduct   white with almond buds

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Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think

Was Emily Dickinson lesbian? Some scholars think so.  Below is a letter that Dickinson sent to her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. It certainly sounds like a letter written by a lesbian. But is this just an artifact of our being 21st century, post-Freudian … Continue reading

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“Witness”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  I’ve been told that the shore’s scattered jellyfish   are remnant tissue   from the placenta of creation   that millions of years ago out of its belly   the ocean heaved forth the mountains and the valleys—   … Continue reading

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PZ Myers, Illiberal Iconoclast: Why Catholics, Agnostics, and Atheists Who Value Freedom Should Be United in Their Opposition to What PZ Myers Did

When University of Minnesota biologist, PZ Myers, in a blog to his readers, asked them to “score” consecrated wafers from Catholic churches, and send them to him for Internet desecration, a line was crossed that no sensible liberal, secular or religious, should condone. Mockery, parody, and blasphemy … Continue reading

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Today’s Happy Thought: Ernest Hemingway on Happy Endings

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, Death in the Afternoon, a woman tells a man that she likes happy endings. The man replies: All endings are the same if you tell them long enough.

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