07 Jan 2018
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PAPER INK WRITER and DISCOVERY

Sticky Post By On January 7, 2018

I am very much a paper and ink writer. The liquid ink flowing on the page materializes thought. I write with a fountain pen, not as an affectation. The letters move organically across the page in plowed ruts where weeds strangle sprouting possibility.

This morning I received the print issue of the Weekend New York Times. I stopped delivery of the weekend print issue out of environmental guilt. Trash suffocates the globe – children live and work on it. Their survival depends on and is threatened by toxic trash heaps. I went through the sections, ambivalent until I opened the Sunday magazine.

The tangibility of manifest presence of material objects feeds my awareness of my physical temporality. My hand moves the pen across the page my being in the world interacts with the many forces supporting my existence, a very different experience from my fingers clicking keys. The cursor absent from the thought process liberates my mind to dally. Read more

08 Dec 2017
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BALTHUS – DANGEROUS TIMES WHEN THE PENDULUM OVERCORRECTS

Sticky Post By On December 8, 2017

The Nazis did it. The Taliban did it. Isis did it.

I say no to the petition to remove the Balthus painting from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art is subjective and almost never should be censored. I’ll go out on a limb to say to never. To censor is to silence. We are on the slippery slope of authoritarian control when works of art – literature music and dance are labeled degenerate.

Women must not.

What begins with one picture may lead to a battle of subjective perception and selective designation of expression. Art controlled not only under the constraints of the patriarchy but also straight-jacketed by self-righteous approval of other women.

The time for the women’s revolution is now. Read more

29 Oct 2017
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BREATHE FREE PRESS ESSAYIST WRITERS RETREAT

Sticky Post By On October 29, 2017

June 3–13, 2018 WRITER RETREAT in SPERLONGA, ITALY

The perfect retreat to write. Sperlonga presents writers with innumerable possibilities. The slow pace of a town immersed in antiquity. The sound of the surf to quiet distractions. Inspired concentration.

Get Published on breathefreepress.org

All participants have the opportunity to publish their retreat work on breathfreepress.org.

Get Published in Print

Your Sperlonga writing published in Essayist Retreat Anthology will showcase the participants work in print.

Please submit your writing sample to join a supportive community of peers working to complete, develop or begin a new project.

Read more

04 Jul 2017
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The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass-A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852

Sticky Post By On July 4, 2017 With No Comments

David Remick’s essay, “AmericanDiginity on the Fourth of July” in The New Yorker led me to search, read and post Frederick Dogulass’ speech in its entirety. One Hundred Sixty-Five Years after Douglass gave his speech Raoul Peck made the documentary I Am Not Your Negro based on James Baldwin’s unfinished work. Unfinished is an understatement.

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has Read more

29 Jun 2017
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TRUMP the CATALYST for LITERARY RESISTANCE

Sticky Post By On June 29, 2017

The catalyst for breathefreepress.org. was Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States considered at the most powerful office in the world. A revelation with a “sudden” biblical force saved my personal ecosystem from collapse. A rebel since my teen years I hold two concepts “dear:” freedom and equality.

I grew up in the aftermath of World War II with the ideals of the US founding documents.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [hu]man[s] are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Read more

25 May 2017
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Classification is not confirmation

Sticky Post By On May 25, 2017 With No Comments

Petrie dishes of capitalist experimentation . . .

It was an odd dream although I was not naked what I wore was neither me nor appropriate to the situation.

(will I be ready if and when recognition comes)
I walk into a meeting of high-powered people

(socially awkward outsider)

All the attention is on me when the representative “I” goes into this fabulously impressive articulate cultural analysis. Of course, I cannot remember when I wake except for something about our minds as Petri dishes for some social, political, corporate experimental bacteria. I write the one phase I can eek out on an orange post-it: Classification is not confirmation.

It took what forty-fifty years for the fringe to come to complete and total power? This brings me to Timothy Snyder’s resistance pamphlet, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. History repeats itself, but in the end, every dictator lives on life-support. The French Revolution—The Russian Revolution and our American revolution have proven the people bend until they break. In this instance, I hope history repeats itself while the imperiled Earth remains habitable. Read more

22 May 2017
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THOUGHTS ON THE BUDDING DICTATOR

Sticky Post By On May 22, 2017 With No Comments

I forget to write and barely read the New York Times since becoming distracted by Trumpmania. I watch what appears to be history rolling in from a black horizon. My eyes glued to CNN and MSNBC as to a telescope turning my focus toward Fox News to avoid the shoals. The puddle of time since Drumpf became president is like crossing the Pacific Ocean through a confluence of three massive storms colliding.

Who is deceiving whom? Is the media running out the story for ratings? Is Donald Drumpf as ignorant and off the wall as he appears? Are his tweets media candy or a distraction from his devious attempts at authoritarian rule? He and the Republican Congress are working in the cloak of chaos to dismantle personal liberty, reverse advances in human and environmental reform. America was greater under a cloud of pollution and contaminated waterways. No? NO!

And where are the patriotic Republicans who have historically voted their conscience to impeach and impede Democratic presidents? Read more