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IN LOVING MEMORY (17 this time)
Just what will the puppet king say or will he simply run and hide as we are left to mourn and pray Seventeen more are dead today, we know better than to abide just what will the puppet king say more hollow words, for which they pay “only more guns can stem the tide.” As…
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HOLOCAUST
Years later on, having walked calmly away from my former faith, I am left still pondering where you find the words to describe, to teach the unspeakable, and how you use them to reach children who have no right to know the unspeakable, but who must, lest they later speak it. It was a generation…
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MARKED
The oddest thing about being Buddhist is what I once was, and not just in a prior life. Born, it turns out, and adopted into a secular Jewish family, I must still be Jewish even if I might have lapsed back to secularity, they say, because my Jewishness is a mark, Cain-like it seems, though…
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EMPTY SPACE
We sit and discuss complex viscosity values and loss tangent ranges throwing in relaxation modulus for good measure, but we end up at ratios, slicing the data ever thinner, until I fog over and remember that today is the first day of summer, and the birds, bathing in the sun play like children finally freed…
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SPACED OUT
I laughed at my parents when they talked about a typewriter as something of a marvel when they were so commonplace. Of course as a boy, half the fun of helping my father at work was knowing the mimeo ink would stain my fingers purple for a week and even borax would only render them…
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RESOUNDING SILENCE*
(*Be forewarned, this is a shift from the usual post. On December 14, 1992 there was a shooting on the campus of Simon’s Rock College of Bard. A professor and student died, four others (my son included) were seriously wounded. Twenty years to the day later, in Connecticut 26 people died in a shooting at…
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VISIONS
The small child peers through the bamboo poles of the bridge as he stares down at a turtle who stares up at him with equal fascination. His mother excitedly says, “see the turtle?” Of course he can see the turtle but he also sees an Ichthyosaurus and giant whales and frightening fish. Later, as she…
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MAGIC, ONCE
As a child he had a magical power. He didn’t like to use it, didn’t want others to know he had it, certainly couldn’t share it. He wasn’t certain when it began to fade, but he noticed the power diminished as he grew, as he learned more about the world, and there was absolutely nothing…
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MOTHER
I called my mother the other day and she did not answer, which she would always do when I called. The dead, I concluded, no longer play by the rules they did when they were still alive. Of course she will call me soon, disrupting my sleep, and chastise me for not trying again.…
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STAR WALKER
His brother said that if you left the windows open at night, the ghosts would come in and might steal your soul. He didn’t care, he wanted to hear the song the stars sang every night, to see them come down and move in pairs across the mesa, for stars, he knew turned orange when…
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an old writer and his words 