Arlene Goldbard's Blog
RSS
Nov.02.2008
I'm in another airport, this time headed to Canada for a speaking engagement. I will be there on election night. I am planning rejoice in the company of North Americans who want regime change here just as much as I do.
Every day brings news of the world's interest in seeing Barack Obama elected...
Continue Reading »
Oct.28.2008
I remember reading something in a book by Doris Lessing—I think it was one of her "space fiction" series, maybe Shikasta. Human beings, her character said, were really meant to live much longer lives than our typical life-expectancy, perhaps even the hundreds of years attributed to...
Continue Reading »
Oct.17.2008
"This time"—my friend stood over a sinkful of dirty dishes, a stricken expression on her face—"I'm voting as if my life depended on it." Extreme energies of hope and fear are rising and ricocheting over every city and town in the nation. I wish there were a way to harness a...
Continue Reading »
Oct.08.2008
Yom Kippur begins tonight. This holy day is the fulcrum of the Jewish year: in preparation, we do a cheshbon hanefesh—a soul inventory—cleaning up our conduct and relationships to ready ourselves for the moment tonight when the beautiful Kol Nidre prayer is chanted, annulling all vows, reminding us...
Continue Reading »
Oct.02.2008
If you've been reading my blog, you've seen me quote before from the Reverend James Lawson's founding statement of principles for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee well over forty years ago. What SNCC was seeking, Lawson wrote, was "a social order or justice permeated by love....
Continue Reading »
Sep.24.2008
The difficulty I have wrapping my head around patriotism is one I sometimes share with other children of immigrants, those whose heritage, like mine, was stamped with the dark face of nationalism, the imprint of a patriotism that believed the country where our forebears were born would be purified...
Continue Reading »
Sep.13.2008
Judging from my friends' reactions (and the level of unrest in the Blogosphere and Punditstan), Sarah Palin's nomination has unleashed a tidal wave of fear and despair large enough to sweep defeat from the jaws of victory—unless we can master this reactivity and get on with winning the election....
Continue Reading »
4 comments
Sep.06.2008
California is in my blood. But—full disclosure—it got there by transfusion. I was born in New York City. Before I was two years old, the three generations of my family then living in this country made the pilgrimage out west in time to meet my father when he mustered out of the Navy, ready to buy a...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Sep.01.2008
I recorded the several hours of the Democratic Party convention broadcast on PBS each night, then fast-forwarded through the pundification that occupied perhaps a third of each program, stopping to listen to all the speeches. On the first evening, I was aware of so many sensations in my body: my...
Continue Reading »
Aug.16.2008
Do you know that Billie Holiday song, "Good Morning Heartache"? Lady Day's lyrics personify the misery she feels at losing her lover, casting pain as her constant companion.
Good morning, fear.
I can't pretend to know how life delivers comeuppance, let alone why, but I'm dogged by...
Continue Reading »
7 comments
Aug.04.2008
In the Jewish calendar, this is the last of three solemn weeks in preparation for Tisha B'Av, the 9th of the month of Av, which is marked by mourning for the destruction of the first and second Temples (2500 and 2000 years ago, respectively) the expulsion from Spain half a millennium ago, and other...
Continue Reading »
Jul.24.2008
I sometimes find the idea of progress in human civilization deeply confusing. Aspects seem unquestionable: penicillin, microwaves, countless other scientific and technological inventions that make possible things our ancestors never imagined, from easy cures for once-fatal diseases to push-button...
Continue Reading »
Jul.16.2008
All the media world's a-twitter about the New Yorker cover caricaturing Barack and Michelle Obama as the right's terrorist nightmare: fist-bumping in mideast mufti in the Oval Office, burning the flag, a portrait of Osama bin Laden over the fireplace, a machine-gun slung across Michelle's broad...
Continue Reading »
Jul.08.2008
One reason I keep feeling we have an opportunity to change course right now has less to do with politics than with the convergence of science and philosophy. Human beings have always been interested in our own motives, in how our minds work. Introspection helps, but research is teaching us a good...
Continue Reading »
Jul.02.2008
Have you ever had one of those scary ah-hah moments? Hurtling along the freeway or gazing out the window of a jet plane, suddenly coming to consciousness: Ohmigod, I'm in a metal capsule going much too fast to stop, surrounded by other metal capsules piloted by who knows what! This is crazy! All in...
Continue Reading »
In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.”
—Frank O'Hara
About Arlene
Arlene Goldbard is a writer and speaker whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics and spirituality. Her blog and other writings may be downloaded from her Web site.
She was born in New York and grew up near San Francisco. She now lives in Richmond...
Causes Arlene Goldbard Supports
Thousand Kites http://www.thousandkites.org/
The...