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You don't analyze a dream, you just pass through it. A dream is sometimes healing and sometimes it makes you anxious. A narrative is the same--you are just in it. A novelist is not an analyst. He just transforms one scene into another. A novelist is one who dreams wide awake. He decides to write and he sits down and dreams away, then wraps it ( Read more... )

Jonathon Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991):

According to our textbook rhetoric, Americans abhor the notion of a social order in which economic privilege and political power are determined by hereditary class. Officially, we have a more enlightened goal in sight: namely, a society in which a family's wealth has no ( Read more... )

Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief (2003):

[S]ince the fourth century, most churches have required those who would join such communion to profess a complex set of beliefs about God and Jesus--beliefs formulated by fourth-century bishops into the ancient Christian creeds. Some, of course, have had no difficulty doing so. Many others, myself included, ( Read more... )

On Saturday night, we saw the McCoy Tyner Septet. Tyner turns 68 this year, and when he tottered out to the piano, he looked every bet of 78, or more. Tyner is best known for his long collaboration with saxophonist John Coltrane. Tyner was 17 when he met Coltrane, who was a sideman for Miles Davis at the time. Tyner later joined the John ( Read more... )

Last night we saw Tommie Lee Jones' film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which takes place along the Texas-Mexico border west of San Antonio and north of Laredo. Loosely based on the incident a few years ago when a sheep herder was shot by soldiers on exercises, though the differences are very significant. The camera lingers over Jones ( Read more... )

1. Grab the nearest book ( Read more... )

Yet, since the fourth century, most churches have required those who would join such communion to profess a complex set of beliefs about God and Jesus-beliefs formulated by fourth-century bishops into the ancient Christian creeds. Some, of course, have no difficulty doing so. Many others, myself included, have had to reflect on what the creeds ( Read more... )

After Scooter Libbey was indicted, the Vice President released a statement that included the following statement:

In our system of government an accused person is presumed innocent until a contrary finding is made by a jury after an opportunity to answer the charges and a full airing of the facts. Mr. Libby is entitled to that opportunity.
It seems ( Read more... )

Some have asked where I got the name Kokopopo. Kokopopo is created from two separate names--"Koko" from Kokopeli, and "popo" from Popocatepetl ( Read more... )