Eight Reasons Out Of Many
1. My mother's life was saved by a "late-term abortion." I was born three years later. I owe my life to my mother's abortion.For that reason I am supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Presidency of...
View Article"We must love one another or die" - The prescience of W.H. Auden
I have not stopped re-reading this poem for the past few days. I know Auden himself disliked it...but perhaps that is because its genius is too harrowing for any one human. A “Guernica” in words, if...
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(VIDEO) Students @ Coretta Scott King's Alma Mater Organize Beautiful Public...
I am a faculty member at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, which boasts among its distinguished graduates Mrs. Coretta Scott King (‘53). Today Ms. Stephanie Muñoz, a graduate student (and a...
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SciCli Blogathon: Man With Sign — 85 Weeks On The Edge
You’ve probably seen the beautiful mobiles of Alexander Calder; you may very well have a plastic or cardboard mobile in your home. The principle is simple enough: a counterweight on one side of a...
View ArticleI'm A Performance Artist. I Know Performance Art. Stop Calling Trump A...
It’s an oft-repeated trope, familiar even before Cheeto Benito hijacked the electoral process. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter described as...
View ArticleWhat Happened When I Took A Walk Today
It’s a sunny day, and I’m walking to the post office. Just as I was turning to go up the steps, a woman calls out to me. She's tall, white, carefully groomed, with a little bit of Michelle Bachmann...
View ArticleMan With Sign, Week 113, Day 5: The Fossil Fuel Economy And Patriarchal Norms...
Note: this is drawn from the daily journal of my roadside vigil, an hour every weekday morning at a heavily-trafficked intersection with an assortment of signs about climate change. This post can be...
View ArticleDaniel Quinn Has Died
Daniel Quinn, best known as the author of Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Providence, died of aspiration pneumonia on February 17, 2018 at Houston Hospice. He was 82.Houston ChronicleHe had...
View ArticleNecessity Defense Prevails Against Civil Infraction Charges in West Roxbury,...
I spent my morning in court today. In August 2016 I joined an ongoing campaign against a natural gas pipeline construction project in West Roxbury, MA, and committed civil disobedience by illegally...
View ArticleMy Mother's Abortions — Telling The Story Once Again.
I’ve posted this diary several times over the past decade, and with the Kennedy resignation (and the subsequent inevitable decimation of abortion rights in this country) filling the news, I think it’s...
View ArticleUpending The Paradigm: Vote For The Democratic Leadership Team!
This morning during my daily music practice/climate-change vigil, I was working on a song. It’s a pretty song, but it’s kind of “square.” I tried some of the standard ways of ornamenting it, and as I...
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Dementia and The Mother Of Us All
Good morning. Welcome to an extended analogy.Her number rings and rings and rings and rings. I call the switchboard, punch my way through the circuitry, get to the main desk in her ward, ask someone...
View ArticleWe Don't Need (Another) Revolution
I’m a Warren Democrat in several ways, as my name attests. My personal politics are well to the left of Joe Biden’s, and slightly to the left of Bernie Sanders’. Many in my circle of friends and...
View ArticleTake The Markey Desk Ad Twitter Challenge!
Ed Markey’s classic TV spot from his 1976 campaign is deservedly iconic. Short, direct, powerfully honest, unforgettable.xxYouTube VideoNow one of his staffers has started a delightful trend.xI...
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Rituals of Resistance: How To Keep On Keeping On (Monday Climate Brief)
As a long-time climate activist I’m waaaaaay too familiar with the resonances of melancholy. Reading bad news — especially bad news which has every likelihood of continuing to be bad for long after...
View ArticleClimate Brief: Lose Your Past and You'll Lose Your Future, Too.
I don’t need to tell you that the latest IPCC report is absolutely terrifying. You already know that. Read AKALib’s summary anyway. This diary was written in the full knowledge that there is hugely...
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Climate Brief: To The Memory of R. Murray Schafer, Who Taught Us To Hear The...
Start with a single sound in your immediate environment. Listen carefully. Now expand the range of your audition outwards, encompassing more. Perhaps you remember the movie, “Powers of Ten”?Do...
View ArticleTX-GOV — Abbott Tests Positive for COVID-19
From the Department of What Goes Around Comes Around, this news:AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has tested positive for COVID-19 Tuesday, the governor’s office announced in a release.“Governor...
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Climate Brief: Thinking Slow, Acting Fast
Human beings are strange and complicated and fiddly creatures who are astonishingly good at being in two places at once while not being anywhere at all.Case in point, the noted physicist Freeman Dyson,...
View ArticleClimate Brief: The Church Of Ancient Light (C.O.A.L.)
(Link to NASA Title Image)I’ve had it up to here with climate-change deniers who claim that“climate change is a new religion”or some analogous word salad. As I’ve had occasion to point out more than...
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