. Once upon a culture long ago or far away, mourning was a state both ritually displayed and visibly endured over protracted time. Widows might literally or effectively sacrifice their lives, though this was manifestation of something other than grief. Black or some other mourning color might be worn for life, maybe for a few […]
A Prayer for the Dead
. The poet Stewart Kestenbaum, who lives in Maine, lost his brother Howard in the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. A Prayer for the Dead The light snow started late last night and continued all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother was […]
Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald, and the War of Ideas
John Cook of Gawker writes of Christopher Hitchens that he “loathed sentiment, welcomed combat, and delighted in inflicting hard truths.” Cook undoubtedly means “sentimentality,” which masquerades everywhere as sentiment, in which case he is indisputably right about Hitchens, who would have begrudged those now attacking him only the regrettable spectacle (he surely would have believed) […]
The Hitchens Post
. In the end, no one will be remembered, a monumental few for a very long time. Others, favored by fortune still, and the riches of their own beings – big, big people – leave a hole when they depart. The air is sucked out of the room, which subsides into a banal kind of […]
The Life with Death of Steve Jobs
. I was going to post on another topic today. Everyone is writing and talking about Steve Jobs, as they should be, but there was no call for me to add more of the same. I’ve read a lot of what has been written, though, and it occurred to me what part of the impact […]