On August 13, four friends and I gave a poetry reading at Arts Upstairs in Phoenicia, New York. The event became an impromptu benefit for Doctors Without Borders. Below is the letter I wrote to the organization, along with a check for $50. Dear Doctors, My friend Alan Fliegel has been asking me […]
An Oration for Occupy Wall Street
Most of the time, history makes us, but once or twice in our lives, we make history. This is one such opportunity. We don’t know where this movement will lead. No one knows. We don’t even know for certain that it’s a movement. But that is the virtue of our assembly. I say "our," not […]
"small details": George Neher
At Cabane Studios, here in Phoenicia, I saw a show called "small details: life in the catskills" by George Neher, who is a local policeman. It was photographs taken with a Holga 120S, a plastic box camera made in China. The edges of the prints tend to be vignetted. (That means they’re slightly darkened.) The […]
Radio: A Performance
I delivered the following speech on April 23 at the Inquiring Mind Bookstore and Café in Saugerties, New York: One of my largest intellectual influences is radio. Yes, you heard me right — I said "radio." Right now, I live deep in the Catskills Mountains, in the district where Boy Scouts go on hikes […]
The upside of fracking and water contamination
It’s become a cliché that water is the new oil. Experts predict that clean, fresh water will, by the end of the century, be as precious and hard to find as black gold is now. Business magazines and websites are already instructing investors on how to profit from the coming market in water. (See […]
Kids and nature deficit
Do you remember playing outdoors as a child? I remember climbing a five-trunked maple tree, playing house in the shady gaps of a honeysuckle thicket, tasting the nectar of columbine flowers, stripping the seeds from plantain stems, for that satisfying prickle along the fingers. If you have kids, I hope they’re getting to have their […]