“A writer’s notebook is not a diary. Writers react. Writers need a place to record these reactions. That’s what a writer’s notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don’t want to forget. A writer’s notebook gives you a place to live like a writer.” - Ralph Fletcher
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
On Journalism and Writing: A Conversation with Chris Hedges [Video]
Author and journalist Christopher Hedges speaks of the despair, destruction, love and truth that he found during his long career of covering wars and social justice throughout the world. Hedges is interviewed by Dean Nelson as part of the 17th annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University.
An Amazing Poem by Hiwot Adilow
A poetry reading from Brave New Voices, 2012. [Video]
Overwhelmed By News
A piece of Oklahoma tornado footage made me cry a few mornings ago, a mother reunited with a son that she clearly assumed she’d never see alive again. She collapsed into hugging, picked him up, rocked him in her arms, then doubled over sobbing and put him back down. She kept touching the boy’s face, caressing him as if to reassure herself with her palms: it’s ok, he’s ok, it’s ok, he’s ok.
Overwhelming.
Donald Rumsfeld Destroyed By Gentle NPR Host via @MajorityFM #p2 #ows
Donald Rumsfeld went on the NPR show Marketplace in an attempt to promote his new book, but he was met with perhaps the hardest questioning he’s ever faced.
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at Majority.FM
NJ Higher Education Student Assistance Authority
Someday, after I’m long dead, some super fan will dig into my external hard drive and edit a collection of my letters to student loan debt collectors. Thanks to my country’s moronic commodification of education, this is how I spend a good deal of my writing time. So, while you wait for that future collection—The #njpoet Debt Letters—to finally be published, I leave you with this sample.
Seven Dollars and a Dream: a micro post #njpoet
One of my regular Twitter followers has launched a campaign to free me from my student debt. If 14,000 people donate $7 each to njpoet.com, she reasons, we can buy my life back from Sallie Mae and NJCLASS.
10,000 Extra Suicides: Austerity Kills via @DemocracyNow #p2 #ows
In their new book, “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills,” economist David Stuckler and physician Sanjay Basu examine the health impacts of austerity across the globe. The authors estimate there have been more than 10,000 additional suicides and up to a million extra cases of depression across Europe and the United States since governments started introducing austerity programs in the aftermath of the economic crisis.
Welcome to the Economic Recovery [for @profwolff]
They posted a semi-formal letter on the bulletin board last night. This was how they let the wait staff, the cooks, the bus boys, and the bartenders know that the restaurant would be closing forever on June 1st.
But it wasn’t like everyone didn’t already know. The local press got wind of the rumors and looked into the story, which, to be fair, is significant.
Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.
Chris Hedges, “Rise Up or Die”
(Source: truthdig.com)
