I am an Episcopalian and lately I've been away from church. Its hard to get out in the winter. And yet I am proud of the progressive stance that Episcopalians have taken when it comes to disability and inclusion. The Episcopal Accessibility Network has lots of useful information about disabil...

Not so long ago I wrote on this blog about the disgraceful discrimination against a woman with a guide dog who wished to take a computer class offered by the Iowa Department for the Blind. The story is terrible for lots of reasons but perhaps the most critical aspect of the matter is that a group of...

  “Beware of serious people for their reality is flat; and they have come to think of themselves as merely flat paste-ons. Their rage at the flatness of their lives knows no end; and they keep all their little imitators scared to death." --Russell Edson They are everywhere the flat people: vi...

  By Anrea Scarpino   I teach composition and writing classes at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and my students are generally a pretty hip lot. CSUDH is an urban commuter university located near Compton (of 90’s rap fame) and my students write papers about being shot, abou...

As a child Sunday evening meant the resumption of school and children are perhaps even more keenly aware of the declining moments of freedom than their elders. There were only a few more hours as the day darkened.The morning would bring arithmetic and the variegated rhetorics of adult enforcement an...

  From Northrup Frye:   "Psalm 148, in the fourth verse: "Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens." Well, it's a matter of common observation that the rain clouds are below the heavens. And the implication of there being water above, or behind the windows...

  The Department of Justice has warned the governor of Texas that the state's residential schools for the "mentally retarded" are putting people in harm's way. The article below is indicative of the incapacity of the state's legislature to fully grasp the human rights dimension ofthis matter.&n...

  So there I was just this morning drinking coffee and channel surfing. I heard three public figures tell three separate lies in just three minutes on three different channels. First up was that old reprobate Newt Gingrich who told Matt Lauer on the Today Show that Americans don't need the pres...

  My friend Leo who manufactures and sells eccentric toys and is a leader in the fight to cure blindness in our lifetimes once spoke to a toy maker in the far east and pointed out that the toys under discussion were defective--as I remember it, the heds were on backwards. "Ah, Mr. Hauser," said...

1. You can’t rule the half light: not like you can at mid-day, the “mezzo-giorno�, that false impression of sunlight that says you will live forever and the baby will stay a baby and first love will always stay in your sleeves. Half light is merciless. There is a spiritual blue about the veins...