Mueller Day
Originally posted on April 18th…
The Living Jesus and the “Monk’s Alphabet”
Jesus had a way of looking at things that was very far from the ordinary, even contradictory to common sense.
All of his careful teachings and powerful examples served the purpose of helping us to see clearly, to understand, and to discern as if our lives depended on it, because they do. Even beyond the grave.
I Will Keep You Alive (Excerpt from the Levins’ “Cardiovascular Romance”)
Bob and Adele Levin’s I Will Keep You Alive: A Cardiovascular Romance is this husband and wife’s joint account of Bob’s heart attacks and recoveries. The Levins’ write-ups of their own emotional states, as well as their angles on vagaries of our country’s healthcare system, make their book a national resource – a map of the future for countless Americans fated to cope with hearts gone wrong.
Betomania
“First’s” new, ah, Iowa correspondent follows up here on his first pass at Beto. This reporter will look to provide close-ups of other Democratic candidates as they roll through Iowa in the coming months…
Quintessential Mesopotamian Protests
My old friend Charlie Keil emailed me–“See why you like Kanan Makiya. Love those lions.”–after he read Makiya’s recent piece in the Kenyon Review, “The Dying Lion.”
i’m a simple man by Nature
from my “subject position” or point of view Don’t Compare Identify
Point Dume
The drive to Point Dume, like Joe, is astounding. That’s one of my words. If Joe was telling this story, he’d say a lot of things in a different way, like: I can’t tell you how many times I drove out there that week! He’d slap his face like Jack Benny and you’d wonder how somebody could look so innocent and capable of violence all at once. Astounding, isn’t it? The way his voice eats up the can’t-tell part and growls away with a moan of a laugh. That’s Joe and that’s Point Dume.
Omar and the Magic Jew
Is Ilhan Omar an anti-Semite? I don’t know. I can tell you that some of the things she’s written and said resonate with anti-Semitic tropes, and those who deny it should know that very well. But Omar may not have understood why images of Jews as disloyal, unjustly wealthy, or vested with magic powers that can “hypnotize the world” are bigoted. After all, she spent the formative years of her youth in Somalia, where such ideas linger below the surface of awareness.
(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue
First contributor Ty Geltmaker steered your editor to “The Life of Gad Beck”—a graphic biography of a gay Jewish hero who fought Nazis in Germany during World War II (and survived). (The image below is from the body of the work…)
