Hope in a Darkening Age...
news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the past, the future...
"THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's always a leap into the unknown future to write anything."--Margaret Atwood "Be kind, be useful, be fearless."--President Barack Obama.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
The Obama Presidency: Amazing Grace
It was one of those moments: spontaneous, dramatic and memorable--and a moment no President but President Barack Obama could create.
Just a year ago June, a young white supremacist shot and killed nine African Americans during a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. The murdered included the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney.
This was both another mass shooting and a specific hate crime against African Americans. It was in this context that President Obama spoke Pinckney's eulogy. He'd spoken many eulogies for gun violence victims. And he was viscerally aware of gun violence as well as violent acts of hatred against black Americans.
His eulogy was eloquent, but what is remembered best is this moment. From his heart emerged the tragic and defiant music of "Amazing Grace."
RIP Dave Parker, All Hail Bobby Bonilla Day
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Two Pittsburgh Pirates greats who I saw play in their prime were in the
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On Turning 79 in 2025
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Top of Trinidad Head June 30, 2025. My climb dedicated to my friend Mike
and to the
memory of Jim Harrison
On one of his birthdays, writer Jim Harrison po...
History of My Reading: Florida Fantasies
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West Palm Beach--1970s postcard
When I abandoned my Cambridge apartment in late 1975 and arrived in my
hometown of Greensburg, PA, I immediately regrett...
Bob Donlin Off the Road
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Only photo I could find of RaeAnne and Bob Donlin, someyears after I knew
themI discovered this typescript in my archives (by which I mean boxes of
random ...
Star Trek's End? (With Update)
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Just as I can't un-see what I saw in the fifth episode of *Star Trek:
Picard*, I wonder if the damage it has done to the Star Trek universe can
ever be und...
Jonathan Miller
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Of all the people I didn't know who died in 2019, I was most saddened by
the death of Jonathan Miller. He was an important presence at various
times in ...
5 years ago
The Malling of America
available at your online bookseller
Manifesto
..."The answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day."--Barack Obama Nov. 4, 2008
"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage." Barack Obama January 20, 2009
"If you turn away now – if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible…well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should make for themselves. Only you can make sure that doesn't happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.--President Obama on Sept. 6, 2012
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