Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Honor, Protect and Share

"KNOW that the person you're talking to is going to be OK eventually. If you can't believe that, pretend that you do: invent in your mind a vision of this person back in a house, back in a job, back with their loved ones. It is not your job to problem-solve them into their new future, just hold out the possiblity for that in your mind for them to lean into."

The New Orleans Disaster Oral History & Memory Project
http://www.aliveintruth.org/index.html

Monday, September 19, 2005

Celebrate the Meeting Place

"Places, names, authorship, all is uncertain in Don Quixote. And uncertainty is compounded by the great democratic revolution wrought by Cervantes and which is the creation of the novel as a common place, lieu commun, lugar comĂșn, that is, the meeting place of the city, the central plaza, the polyforum, the public square where everyone has a right to be heard but no one has the right to exclusive speech."

from In praise of the novel by Carlos Fuentes
http://www.signandsight.com/features/361.html

Friday, September 09, 2005

Strange and Beautiful

"Swil Kanim makes beautiful music. That's the most important fact. But his music is also a colonial cocktail of western civ, indigenous hip-hop, sacred profanity, folk, rock, non-sense, and old standards that sound new and visa-versa. I am not sure why Swil Kanim and the violin fell in love with each other, but their children are sure strange and beautiful."
--Sherman Alexie

http://www.swilkanim.net/