Dreamers Rise

It rains and keeps raining. My soul is wet from hearing it. So much rain. . . — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet I will die in Pa...

Citing no evidence, our president-elect — and how ashamed, how defiled one feels, personally and as a citizen, having to call him that — has...

This rousing song by Los Lobos has been one of my favorites for more than thirty years. The video for it has a corny '80s feel to it ...

Goya's great series of prints Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War) is renowned for its depiction of the horrors of the Pe...

Universal Music Ireland has released a modestly-priced CD & DVD package devoted to my favorite Irish trad band, Planxty. Entitled Betwee...

Teju Cole: Evil settles into everyday life when people are unable or unwilling to recognize it. It makes its home among us when we are kee...

Chalmers Johnson: As a goddess, Nemesis represents a warning that neither men nor women nor countries can indefinitely ignore the demands o...

I would have preferred to write about Tyler Anbinder's superb new book about "immigrant New York" under happier circumstances,...

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel The dogs of money all at his heel Magicians cry "Oh truth! Oh real!" We're all wor...

From the New York Times: [Expletive deleted] said he would quickly cancel a program Mr. Obama put in place by executive action that gave pro...

I first posted the following two years ago, in the wake of another electoral disaster. Everything in it still stands. I'm updating it to...

Well that’s that. We've succumbed to the attractions of someone who was not only a transparent con artist and buffoon but who chose ...

The woods, November 2016. (Summer stonebirths are here . )

Francisco Goya, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The sleep of reason produces monsters) 1799. "Poised alertly at Goya's fee...

There was the faintest touch of frost on the grass this morning, and the temperature was hovering right around the freezing point when I a...

What's-his-name, in the role of the original sociopath. "His poltroonery is only surpassed by his invincible avarice" ( Macmi...

Thomas Hardy: Up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of the common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the blades...

At first, it's a curious feeling of tautness in the palm of his left hand, no pain, just a sensation that the skin is being pulled towar...

Herman Melville: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find m...

These photographs were taken from one of my favorite spots on earth, a dam that holds back a local reservoir. A couple of days before...