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February 13, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
What took place in Egypt between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, 2011, was a revolution, but it was non-violent and it joined together disparate ideological factions, rich and poor, old and young, Christian and Muslim. It gave the lie to the notion that moderation in politics cannot be a revolutionary force for transformative change.
February 11, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
Hosni Mubarak resigned today as president of Egypt, ending 3 decades of authoritarian rule. His vice president, Omar Suleiman, said power has been entrusted to the leadership of the Egyptian military. There is music, singing and dancing, in Cairo, as demonstrators hurl fireworks into the air and chant about the fall of Mubarak and the emergence of political freedom.
November 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”
April 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Earth Day 2010 finds our world, in many ways, at a moment of crucial historical importance, on the issue of climate destabilization and environmental stewardship. The combined effects of major scientific advances, which have brought a wealth of hard evidence, the global campaign to raise awareness, and the deteriorating conditions of the carbon fuel sector’s relationship with consumers’ interest, now mean awareness of the urgent need to achieve a more sustainable global economic infrastructure has spread rapidly.
February 14, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Esperanza Spalding, a rising star in the jazz world, and an increasingly recognizable face at high-profile cultural gatherings, performs “Tell Him” at last year’s White House Poetry Jam, in this video. The song is a moody, jazzy blend of love and meditation, an apt message for a weekend on which we celebrate both the virtues [...]
January 4, 2010 :: Carmen Visna :: Comments Off
La luna se aleja, no veo el camino; estoy lista, medito, pero el futuro no me pertenece. Por lo tanto, no duermo. Busco en las tinieblas, hacia las cuatro, mi nombre; ya no existe. Esta experiencia desconcertante me gusta, porque ayuda a definir los límites; sé hasta dónde tengo que limitarme en sociedad. Imagino que el yo, en general, es un fenómeno menos comprobado que lo que pensamos.
August 30, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
At yesterday’s funeral service for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his son Teddy —Edward, Jr.— gave a stirring eulogy, one of many, in which he lauded his father’s spirit of perseverance and his ability to infuse others, himself included, with that optimistic spirit. He tells of his father’s lessons to him as a boy of besting more talented opponents by superior preparation and by working harder and longer to out-perform and outlast them when the time came.
August 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
One of my closest friends in the world is a committed Republican, as is my father, whose father was a Republican elected to various offices in our state. The friend —whom we’ll call “Dutch”— often chides me for our differences of opinion, and we often have energetic philosophical debates in which we try to detail the workings of the universe according to our own personal abstractions or tastes.
August 13, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday hosted 16 new Medal of Freedom recipients at the White House, honoring their lifelong contributions to the expansion of human understanding and the promotion of individual liberty and human dignity. Among the recipients were scientists and activists, soldiers and political leaders, preachers and athletes, native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. The 16 laureates exemplify not only rare talent and indomitable spirit, but also a devotion to human dignity and understanding.
August 1, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Is the creative act a mission, a success, a failure? Is it a process? Are there geniuses, or do we all carry filaments and thunderclaps of genius deep within? Gilbert explains that as a writer, as someone devoted to a creative process, she’s been subjected to countless discouraging suggestions about how likely failure is and how failing at a creative life can be so destructive, so much an engine for suffering and marginalization.
May 9, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
This “song around the world” recording of Bob Marley’s “One Love” is an expression of the Playing for Change team’s approach to using the creative process to reach the point where the message of human creativity and expression illuminates a basic common humanity. It is, like any effective rendition of the song, a hymn to love and understanding, but it is also a lesson about the little ways any given person might contribute texture and emotion to a shared undertaking, a strong example of the Playing for Change project.
January 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
All systems fail, all organized interactions are vulnerable to entropy, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And at best, we are but stardust, a beautiful yet haunting explanation of our origins. Infused with light. Doomed to shadow. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, in the mortal physical realm, entropy is always interfering. The intellect often uses convenient [...]
January 6, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Es un paisaje de relevancias inesperadamente centrales e imprescindibles que he descubierto en volver a pisar este territorio almado, sentido, visceral, es una geología de acontecimientos inmersos en el espíritu, confesiones casi imposibles, miradas que lo explican todo tan abierta como cautelosamente, un oleaje de necesidades que por suerte son también gustos y lujos, intermitencias y alas que nos llevan a algo más duradero…
December 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Distrust is not a mood or emotional state, it is not a reaction to misfortune; it is a doctrine, and there is a diverse and dispersed sect of believers who propagate it with passion. This sect is comprised of people who openly proclaim their faith in distrust, as a cosmology or a lifestyle choice, a poisonous logic against which little can be done, because its power is rooted in the total decisiveness of its community of believers about living systematically in a state of distrust, trusting until the last in there being no more intelligent way to live.
November 28, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Faultlines are lifegivers, places where deep primordial energy comes up to the surface of the living world and makes more world; flaws in the perfectly smooth terrain are landmarks and give meaning to the surrounding landscape, become nameable places and so exist at the root of language… we are wrong to want to ‘get beyond’ or even ’smooth over’ the imperfect, because that separation between one thing and another, even between ideal and actual, is what gives the constellation of difference in which we all come to be, in which all human relations situate both the core and the outer limits of their reason for being…
November 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
A “wave election”, with public sentiment clearly moving in a new direction, calling for principled governance, with a new focus on progressive aims… economic crisis, having built up over a decade, hidden in the esoteric workings of financial instruments reliant on advanced physics for mathematical proof of viability, worsened by unprincipled exaggerations and manipulations… the potential for a major swing in global opinions about the meaning of political systems… the climate is ripe for change, and we now face the problem of conceptualizing change, in order to see and understand its implementation.
November 13, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Complexity is not an outlandish tendency of troubled souls and pretentious intellects; it is the basic state of nature as we know it. The more we discover, the more certain we can be of this: even elemental particles are less solid than they seem, behaving like tightly bound arrangements of spherical bodies —irreducible monads—, they apparently achieve this physics by behaving like something they are not (now widely accepted in particle physics, “string theory” proposes that elemental particles are actually 2-dimensional vibrating “strings” whose vibration causes them to interact as if they were not strings at all).
September 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
I want to write about hope, about the nature of optimism and how closely linked the quality of imagination is to our ability to conceive of, work for and see through meaningful improvements to the human condition. I want to write about it because it is such a vital commodity in our times, such a spiritual enigma and a challenge to our political systems, but then one glaring fact becomes clear that seems to limit what can be said about hope: that vital spiritual resource does not stand alone, but is linked in every case to human specifics, inseparable from what we seek to apply to it, and so hope is different to all people, even in its most essential manifestations.
July 1, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The historic and landscape canvases of J.M.W. Turner have invaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a bath of vibrant color and the artist’s characteristic ability to paint the energy of forces converging in space and time. The exhibit is more than a mere retrospective; it will deliver to many visitors their first real taste of the pioneering British painter’s ambitious experiments with light, scale and texture, and it illustrates how his work informs many of the innovations that would later come in imrpessionist and avant-garde movements.
June 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The ‘hard truths’ are those that make us cringe, that give us pause and drive us to worry that we must ignore the truth or conceal it or find the most adequate disguise, even before our most intimate relations. They are a powerful driver of human behavior, and they often come into everyday conversations about the need to deal with problems or to assimilate a difficult emotional burden. The problem is: they don’t exist.
May 20, 2008 :: jr3o :: Comments Off
La desconfianza no es un estado de ánimo, no es una reacción a la desdicha; es una doctrina, y existe una secta dispersa que la difunde. Esta secta consta de una gente que apuesta abiertamente por la desconfianza, como cosmología o plan de vida, una lógica venenosa contra la que poco se puede hacer, porque su fuerza radica en la decisión total de sus congregantes de vivir en la desconfianza, confiados hasta la última en que no puede haber otra forma de vida más inteligente.
April 15, 2008 :: jr3o :: Comments Off
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
December 5, 2007 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
A morass of hope and upheaval circumscribes the human experience, the fact of living in the world, at odds with the world, in contention for a patch of sunlight amid overturned ambitions and frustrated ideals. Most severe human conflict emerges from the complexity of such contention. One method of surviving, emotionally, as an intellect, as a human being refusing to give up on humanity, is the resort to beauty.
November 5, 2007 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
El modernismo, gran época de la innovación y del diseño, adornos lujosos y caprichosos, entretejidos con estructuras completamente nuevas e insólitas, avances en la ingeniería y poesía infundiendo la mezcla de una vida especial que no tenía par en la época. O, ¿puede que sea una tradición ya pasada de moda que hay que superar para tener una “identidad propia”?
October 30, 2007 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
La vita è bella! es un proyecto de exposición con el fin de celebrar los detalles que hacen hasta de lo más humildemente personal o mundano un reino de fascinación y deleite. El proyecto aspira a mostrar que el aburrimiento es siempre algo mitológico más que existente, una historia conventiente o instructiva, y que hasta [...]
July 4, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
s el 4 de julio y en mi país, todo el mundo está de fiesta. Hay personas que no pueden dejar de trabajar, enfermeras, policías, pero la celebración inunda el paisaje social. Se celebra: la independencia colonial, la teoría de la democracia, en momentos sinceros también la realidad de la democracia, lo que se quiere vivir, la familia y los seres queridos, el lujo del combustible cada vez menos asequible, el hecho de que hoy, no trabajan ni los bancos ni los políticos.
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