• ATONEMENT

    Someone said that with each breathyou take you are inhaling atomsthat Einstein once inhaled, andif that is true you are also inhalingatoms that Stalin and Hitler inhaled.But extend that logic, when youwalk the old cities of Europe,and particularly those near wherethe Nazis built their camps, pausefor a long moment and ask yourselfon whose ashes you…


  • HE WAS

    He was a writer. That is what he told people who asked what he did. Although he said it was what, no who he was. He said he wanted to be the sort of person that Stalin feared, a man of ideas, maybe someday, in an Alexieian world, charged with a crime of holding an…


  • GREAT DANGER

    There are those who saythat we are engagedin a culture war, and thatmay be an apt description,even as it misses its mark. It is hardly cultures thatare at war, but those whotake shelter under theirfalse mantle, armoredin labels, shielded by cliches. But the weapons of the warare quite real, knownfor ages, Stalin and Alexiecalling them…


  • STATISTIC

    Today, now many,yesterday, tomorrow, how many? We have grown tired of countingthe mind cannot deal with numbersof that magnitude, Stalin was correct,it is all statistics now, and bodies,always more bodies, never enough,always too many, by violencein the street, in the economy,in the courthouse, in the COVID ward,there are too many places now,where the dead gather,…