the A-Line: a journal of progressive thought will highlight, by way of the feature called “Convergence,” problems for thought and practice at least monthly, beginning with the launch issue of the journal. We will regularly solicit short pieces of writing from several of our contributors, contributing editors, as well as guest […]
The signature page of my passport instructs the bearer—in all caps—to “See p. 27.” Reissued in 2014, my copy of this inestimable document, snugly fit in its leather case, edged at two corners in gold metal, rode my left hip for all of three years, when, one fine day, not […]
Last Thanksgiving, my mother sat in her open family room staring before and behind her as she told an animated story to me and my eldest sister. Her attention was distracted by the television she sat in front of while we stood, and the visage of Donald J. Trump that […]
Humans live by and through stories, those told to them and those they tell themselves and others. As one such type of story, the fable is of particular importance in shaping consciousness insofar as its intent is to impart moral guidance for living in the world, often conveyed into the […]
PART I: Muheakantuck Much earlier, for some thousands of years, there lived here the Lenni Lenape people, “the true people,” thought to be the eldest and who were given deference among other Algonkian speaking peoples of the forest civilizations. They are the first settlers and hence the ancestors of all […]
The geopolitical maelstrom’s now broadening danger derives from multiple goads toward isolated self-interest’s entrenched confusion. Fanatical simplifications emerge in response. When heightened political anxiety and jingoistic aggression polarize public discourse, nuance gives way to verbal reductions, petrified options, and emotional mania. Trump’s backdoor entry to the White House exacerbated already-extant […]
From one many Many one Facts on ground Head in clouds More perfect, less perfect Imperfect, just perfect Less than we thought More to become No man’s land That is our land Sojourners on way To where we cannot say Don’t forget that caviar Is just fish eggs in a […]
Time’s solemn ache traverses freedom, drunk clowns and thugs seek obliteration. History ends, exculpation starts. Privacy sequestered in virtual weeds, conformity’s patriotic terror, ballooning misery narcotized once more again, always. Exculpatory explication’s naked hope, emboldened pleas, flounder: one by one . . . moon rising, the spirit quelled succumbs.
I. 1859 “What to the Slave is the fourth of July?” asked Frederick Douglass the abolitionist prophet once enslaved who stole and then wrote himself free. Today I think Lonely. II. 2015 The hurricane has been down graded to a tropical storm but there is poetic justice despite the […]
The Enchantment of BeingFebruary 6, 2018
“Like Rain, Like Thunder, Like Lightning, Like Fire”February 6, 2018
In the Crawlspace: Hill, Franken, and #MeToo PainFebruary 6, 2018
Symphony of CombsFebruary 6, 2018