Why zombies? Why now? Zombies are everywhere. Wikipedia lists fourteen comic books, eight nonfiction books, over thirty novels and anthologies devoted to zombies. I won’t even count the movies and TV shows. My favorite is AMC’s “The Walking Dead”, which begins in post-zombie-apocalypse Atlanta. Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, awakens from a …
Between me and my God There are only eleven commandments; The eleventh says: Thou shalt not Bury thy brother alive — Atukwei Okai Like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I watch with keen interest the Occupy Wall Street movement and its affiliates, in my case Occupy St. Louis. Like many Americans, perhaps most Americans, I …
I went to the Occupy St. Louis rally on Friday. There was a lot of excitement in the air. What struck me was the range of folks — housewives, veterans, unionists, an AARP group, students, teachers of course. Not just the usual “Same Six Radicals”, as a friend puts it. I had a number of …
I occurs to me that I got home from Vietnam forty years ago today. Indeed, at this very hour. My major sensation is not so much nostalgia or sadness as much as — forty years! Forty years. My God, I was only twenty at the time I got out of the army, and now it’s …
still it’s strange – autumn longing for a crisp winter Sunday after church On my desk is a picture of two Japanese screens I saw last year at the art museum. On these screens are paintings of poems hung first from a cherry tree in spring, then from a maple tree in autumn. The petals, …
We all watch for fire for all the fallen dead to return and teach us a language so terrible it could resurrect us all. — Joy Harjo, In Mad Love And War _____ So a colleague says, “You’re a veteran. What are your favorite war movies?” I am alternately drawn to, and disturbed by, war …
Charley, a new retiree-greeter at Wal-Mart, just couldn’t seem to get to work on time. Every day he was 5, 10, 15 minutes late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp-minded and a real credit to the company and obviously demonstrating their “Older Person Friendly” policies. One day the boss called him …
When I lived in Mexico City, I now and again stopped at the Cafe Tacuba, just a few blocks from the Zocalo, the city center. The Cafe Tacuba is a pastry and snack joint built in a colonial nunnery. It’s a popular lunch spot for government workers. It’s built right on the old Aztec causeway …