My Summer Vacation in Afghanistan

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This beautiful piece of travel writing was first published in First of the Month in 2002. The following passage hints at how it provides a deep back story to current events:

The fact that the Taliban succeeded in taking over Afghanistan has always seemed to me a certain sign that the Afghanistan I knew was completely smashed to hell by the Russians and by civil war. I never heard any Afghan, however pious, praise “fundamentalism” or mullah-inspired bigotry. No one had ever heard of this perversion of Islam, which then existed only in Saudi Arabia. Afghan Islam was very orthopractic, but also very pro-sufi; essentially it was old-fashioned mainstream Islam. The idea of banning kite-flying would have probably caused hoots of incredulous laughter. It must have taken twenty years of vicious neo-imperialist ideological cultural murder and oppression to make Talibanism look like the least of all available evils.

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A Piece from “The 14 Ounce Pound”

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The late Nat Finkelstein contributed photographs and prose to “First” in the 00’s. He’s best known for his 60s pictures of Warhol’s Factory, but his life was bigger than his images. This piece, “Kandahar, 1971”, about his time in Afghanistan is from his memoir, “The 14 Ounce Pound.” (You can read another chapter here.) Nat knew this hunk of his past was pretty far gone, but he wondered if Afghanistan has “changed much in the past 1200 years.” 

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Zoom to the Future with Bob Moses (A Civil Rights Agenda for the 21st Century)

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During the last stretch of his life, Bob Moses made time to meet with small groups of strangers who talked through the issue of caste in America—“what it means to you; and how you see it manifest itself in American classrooms.” He wasn’t just musing around. These Zoom raps—informed, no doubt, by the practice of Moses’ mentor Ella Baker who believed major social insurgencies must be rooted in humane face-to-face interplay—were part of campaign to build a national consensus. Moses knew he wouldn’t be around to see the future he envisioned, but he hoped Americans of all kinds and conditions would suss that the country’s school system must be remade in order to break down our caste structure.

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Eliminating Caste in America’s Classrooms (A National Consensus Project Working Paper)

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I. America’s caste system depends on caste in classrooms

The idea that America’s schools level the playing field for America’s children is a myth. The playing field has always been sharply tilted–or even completely walled off–to make it easier for the children of affluent families to inherit superior caste status. Even after Brown v. Board of Education, schools are where lower caste students–those with darker-skin and those living in poverty–are taught their subordinate place in U.S. society and in the U.S. economy.

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Radical Equations

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When Bob Moses died last Sunday, Taylor Branch–author of America in the King Years–pointed out on Twitter that Moses was a student of the Constitution.

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Towards A Tragic View of Darren Beattie

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Few things shock me anymore. And I’m the worse for it. But leave it to an ex-Trump speechwriter to find a way. A think piece from Revolver was making the rounds on Fox News and into the living rooms of a million Americans. In it, one Darren Beattie critically examined court proceedings for some of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists. He noticed some defendants had yet to be charged. From this, he conjectured that these unnamed people are FBI agents, and that the entire day was an inside job.

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“It’s All Yours, Lestrade.”

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“(T)ruth is just not a matter of discovering objective facts.

Wikipedia. “Philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard.”

Restrictions had been off for a week when Goshkin returned to the café. The tables were spaced. The front door and windows were open. Less than a fifth of the chairs were taken.  Few customers were masked.

“The Republicans want so’s you can’t discriminate against the unvaccinated.” Murray looked up, worried, from his Times.

“So they’ll die.” Large Victor bit his croissant.

“Guys. Shekit,” Goshkin said from the next table.

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Seeing Is Believing

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Last month I got a lift when I learned Blue Collar–Paul Schrader’s 1978 movie about working class lifers and union corruption–unsettled a group of middle class city kids who’d never seen the inside of a factory. Their weightier-than-woke response to a screening of the movie in NYC hints it remains a model of popular realist art.

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A Cuckold Story

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The circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – perhaps, in fact, it’s true for all lives – of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal.

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Last Man Standing: Don’t Forget to Stretch!

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The Author Watching the NBA Finals.

1. Fallen Stars

Just as far right politicians, in France and the United States, indulge in theories that warn of the danger of being “replaced” by a population intent on taking not only their rightful place, but destroying them (annihilating their very being), the basketball world is experiencing an analogous phenomenon.  And why not?  Those “Basketball Is Life” t-shirts had it at least partially right: let’s settle for “Basketball Mirrors Life.”  One can always find a parallel phenomenon.

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The Riderless Horse (Letter from Port au Prince)

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The year was 1963. The name of the horse was Black Jack.

Even for a 10 year old, it was both moving and troubling to see the horse with no rider following the coffin of President John Kennedy–with a spirited strut, yet not easily controlled.

The horse with the empty saddle is an ancient symbol of poignant absence.

The horse without a master, the nation without a leader, the body without a soul.

We are living the painful and dangerous days after the brutal killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. The horse has no rider, and does not know where to turn.

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Tipping Point

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The other day I sat with a man, his name is Ricardo. Or was. I hope is. He was less than a mile from my home, which is filled with the things I buy with paintings—whole bean coffee, volcanic face masks, limonada, audiophile-approved speakers. I can’t stop thinking how close he was, I keep looking out my kitchen window in the direction of Ricardo.

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Party Lines

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What It Was (July 20)

One year ago today Trump outdid himself rhetorically, reaching astonishing heights of inspiration during a dark hour of American crisis. It was a stirring challenge to the better angels of our nature. Speaking of the pandemic’s rising death toll, Trump tugged at the heartstrings of America when he declared to Chris Wallace, “It is what it is.”

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