Poetry Monday: March 7, 2022
By Categories: Poetry Monday

 

                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Giannini

Good morning, everyone!  We last featured David Giannini in 2011, but are welcoming him again now for a very special reason: the gorgeousness of his new book.  Yes, the word is accurate, and you’ll soon learn why.

Meanwhile, I do hope you, dear readers, have survived all our recent holidays in the midst of a year like few we have ever known and now come to us fully vaccinated, boosted and masked if you’re not home alone.

“The Dawn of Nothing Important” (Dos Madres Press, 2022) is so beautiful that I had to stand it up to admire it before beginning to read the poems, which are fully deserving also of anyone’s admiration.  It now takes pride of place on my shelves, as it may on yours, unless you choose to display it on a coffee table for visitors to pick up and admire.

Award-winning poet David Giannini has been giving us wonderful poems for many years.  But that’s not all he’s done. He has been a gravedigger, a beekeeper, a professor at Williams College, the University of Massachusetts and Berkshire Community College, having begun his teaching career with Continue reading Poetry Monday: March 7, 2022

Psychedelics
By Categories: EVENTS

ROUNDTABLE ON 3/12 AT 2:30PM EST: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SPOT IN ZOOM AUDIENCE
Psychedelics Saturday 2:30 PM EST 12 March 2022

Neuroplasticity: it’s what our brains do. We alter our minds when we engage with the world and with the people in it. But, of course, when we think of “mind altering drugs” we refer to something else. That there might be a shortcut, a wormhole, a portal to some new and improved state of mind has long held our fascination. Yes, that includes alcohol, but while alcohol can affect mood and anxiety and augment sociability, there is something especially appealing about opening a window onto a whole new view of reality itself. Hence the new question born in the 1960’s: “are you experienced?’.

Psychedelics have been featured and feared, romanticized and reviled, lauded and suspected since the earliest epochs of human history. In many tribal ceremonies certain substances with “mind expanding” properties were invoked as communal invitations toward the transcendent. In battle, various plants, herbs, and potions were reputed to make warriors assassins, berserkers, or heroes. Continue reading Psychedelics

In Ukraine, a long history of Russian crimes against Jews
By Categories: History, Politics

Click Here to Read: In Ukraine, a long history of Russian crimes against Jews by Benjamin Ivry on the Forward website on February 28, 2022.Religious

Jews in Khorostkiv, small town in Ternopil region of western Ukraine, in 1917 during times First World War. Hasids. Hasidic Jews of eastern Galicia (west Ukraine, then still Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918) Author Unknown. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.