Category Archives: Features

20 years ago on the morning of September 11 . . .

An excerpt from Jenna Orkin’s memoir ‘Ground Zero Wars: The Fight to Reveal the Lies of the EPA in the Wake of 9/11 and Clean Up Lower Manhattan.’

Tues. 11 Sept. 11:50 am: If any of you hears news of how the kids at Stuyvesant are doing subsequent to this morning’s attacks on the World Trade Center, please phone or email me by any of the methods below. Continue reading

The loudest voices make the greatest changes

Playwright and screenwriter Richard Wesley on Black Lives Matter, Black Power, Trump, and the noise from the balcony.

In mid-May, this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were announced, and as I scrolled down the list of recipients, I was surprised and delighted to see that the award for music had gone to Anthony Davis’ opera The Central Park Five, its libretto written by my longtime friend and colleague Richard Wesley. The piece tells the now well-known story of the five innocent young men falsely accused of rape and assault by police and much of the public, including Donald Trump. Continue reading

The mother of us all: India’s Ancient Vedic civilization

Part Four: Restoration

The previous article, “Decline and Fall,” described the loss of Vedic culture. Continue reading

The mother of us all: Ancient India’s Vedic civilization

Part Three: Decline and fall

The previous article, “The Global Culture,” described how Vedic civilization spread around the world. This one tells of its loss. Continue reading

The mother of us all: Ancient India’s Vedic civilization

Part Two: The global culture

The previous article,”The Homeland,” described the origins of Vedic civilization in India. This one tells how it spread around the world. Continue reading

The mother of us all: Ancient India’s Vedic civilization

Part One: The Homeland

Researchers have determined that the Vedic culture of India was the first global civilization. They have uncovered archeological and historical evidence indicating that the society which began millennia ago in the Indus Valley grew to encompass all of South Asia, then spread peacefully to many parts of the world. Continue reading

Obscured American: Chang the owner of Jenny’s Place and Dollar City

The jokes about New Jersey keep coming. It has the third highest taxes in the country, yet ranks dead last in fiscal health. Its most successful residents flee. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Lancaster County, PA

I’ve hung out with poet Hai-Dang Phan in quite a few places. Since our first meeting in Certaldo, Italy, in 2003, we’ve downed a few pints together in New York, Washington, Milwaukee, Iowa, Illinois, Philadelphia, Hanoi, Saigon and Vung Tau. This week, Hai-Dang flew down from Boston, and with his rented car, we spent two days visiting a handful of Pennsylvania and New Jersey towns. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Callowhill, Philadelphia

I’m sitting in a spacious bar, Love City, that was once a factory. Too slicked up, it’s not quite a ruin bar, of the kind you find in Budapest. The patrons are mostly hipsters and yuppies, but with a handful of Joe Sixpacks thrown in. Looking like contractors, they’re probably fixing properties in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Palmyra, NJ

When out-of-town friends visit, I like to take them to Camden. With its high crime, horrible government and general wretchedness, it’s the worst of America’s present and, if all goes according to plans, our stereotypical future. Soon as you cross into Collingswood or Gloucester, however, the graffiti, trash, abandoned houses, sagging pants and neck tattoos disappear. In fact, South Jersey is dotted with quaint boroughs featuring relatively active Main Streets. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Point Breeze in Philadelphia

Southerner Fred Reed writes about Yankee hypocrisy, “You’ve heard about white flight. In nearly about every city in the North, white people streak for the suburbs so’s not to be near black people, and then they talk about how bad Southerners are for doing the same thing [ . . . ] Fact is, you can see more social, comfortable integration in a catfish house in Louisiana than you can in probably all of Washington.” Continue reading

Obscured American: Melissa the Iraqi refugee

With their vast parking lots and chain stores, strip malls may appear generic, impersonal and characterless, but each harbors an intense web of social interactions, with an infinity of stories to tell, but to even state this is redundant, for there’s no man, woman, child or dog who isn’t, by his lonesome, asshole self, a thousand-page novel. Continue reading

A people’s historian: Ramzy Baroud on journalism and history and why ‘Palestinians already have a voice’

When it comes to Palestine, we often see a dichotomy between mainstream media platforms—which are essentially molded out of a Zionist narrative—and a counter-narrative, produced by a young generation of highly educated Palestinians which try to reach new audiences, tear down the limits imposed by the dominant rhetoric and take center stage. This generation of intellectuals tries to define its role in the aftermath of the Oslo fiasco, now that it has become clear that the US-sponsored ‘Peace Process’ as the sole criterion of conflict resolution is dead and gone. Continue reading

Obscured American: Katy the bartender and nursing student

Jonathan Revusky was in Philly for a few days, and I had a great time showing Jon around. We went to Kensington, Fishtown, Camden, Point Breeze, Little Cambodia and Rittenhouse Square, all but the last at the sinking end of the economic scale, places I’m well familiar with. At Jack’s Famous Bar, we ordered a cheesesteak and a roast beef sandwich for just $4 each, my kind of price, and I thought our lunch excellent. In Camden, I steered Jon to a bodega where a cheesesteak was just $3.50. Jon said, “I would never have walked into a place like that, if I wasn’t with you.” Most Americans wouldn’t go to Camden, period, even if you paid them. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: New Haven, Connecticut

I’ve only been to New Haven four times, and last week, it was only to participate in the commemoration of the Fall of Saigon, as organized by the Vietnamese Studies Program at Yale. I was one of three poets invited. The other two were Phan Nhien Hao (b. 1967) and To Thuy Yen (b. 1938). Continue reading

Obscured American: Rudy Dent a 9–11 first responder

On February 18, I was in Detroit to attend a presentation, “The War on Islam: 9/11 Revisited, Uncovered & Exposed.” Sponsored by the Nation of Islam, it featured Kevin Barrett, Richard Gage and Christopher Bollyn. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Atlanta, Georgia

Knowing you can’t run from their jokes, bus drivers will crack a few, so on the endless leg from Washington to Atlanta, the driver intoned, “I don’t believe in Lost and Found, ladies and gentlemen, only eBay. If you forget something on this bus, you can find it on eBay.” Later, he chastised us all because someone had pissed on the toilet’s floor. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Say Ann Arbor and people will think of Michigan football, with the second biggest stadium in the entire world, behind only North Korea’s Rungrado May Day Stadium. The annual marijuana rally, Hash Bash, may also come to mind. Continue reading

Postcard from the End of America: Philly’s Italian Market

I live a block from the Italian Market, see, and its ecology is more complex than anything I could ever aspire to describe, but better something than nothing, so let me give you a little tour of the Eyetalian Market. Continue reading

Obscured American: Peter the food service worker

An American president has become a cartoon hero or villain. Like Obama, Trump is an inconsequential yet lurid target for worshippers and detractors to unload emotions. As we rejoice or rage at this figurehead, the Military Banking Complex will continue to serve the elites at our expense. Continue reading

Obscured American: Eddie the house painter

When 46-year-old Eddie found out I’d been interviewing people, he wanted to talk. “You can write a book about me!” and that’s true enough, but then again, I’ve never met an uninteresting person. Continue reading

Obscured American: Hank the Christian constitutionalist

America has become an eviscerated country draped in a gigantic flag. Day by day, its culture becomes more grotesque and obscene, a luna park of lunacy. Leached of essence, it burps up slogans, but who’s convinced? Continue reading

Obscured American: B.B. the bartender

The flame-like tree and yellow stars from Van Gogh’s Starry Night burn on B.B.’s right shoulder. Blonde, slim and 33, she bartends at Friendly Lounge twice a week. She calls everyone “darling,” as in, “Are you good, darling? You need another one?” Continue reading

Obscured American: Amanda Zinoman the film editor

Yes, it is a bit odd to include Amanda in my series of obscured Americans. She is a very successful editor of films that have appeared on television and in theaters. Her credits include Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider (1994), Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business (1994), The Lost Children of Rockdale County (1999), Drinking Apart (2000), The Last Jews of Libya (2007) and Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011). Continue reading

Obscured American: Amanda the ex-nurse

With huge tax breaks, Camden has lured several companies to this wrecked city, so a small chunk of downtown is getting spruced up. Shirtless or in wife beaters, tattooed junkies still lurk around the Walter Rand Transportation Center, but the Third-World clothing stands have been shooed from the shadow of City Hall. Crown Chicken has moved into a less squalid space, and Dunkin’ Donuts has gotten a facelift. A yuppyish-looking bar has opened on Martin Luther King. Continue reading

Obscured American: Eileen Walbank the ex-insurance company employee

In Philadelphia, I often see Chinese push their grandchildren around in strollers, so the three-generation households are evidently still common in that community. In China itself, citizens can be fined or even jailed for not visiting their aging parents enough. That there is such a law can only mean that familial bonds are weakening, however, as they are in every modern society. By assuming responsibilities for children and the elderly, the state supplants the family, and this is welcomed by most of us. We want to be free during our best years. Continue reading

Obscured American: Felix the artist, ex-grocer and ex-hospital worker

Felix lives on the 24th floor of Riverview, a subsidized complex for senior citizens. Once a dreaded housing project, it is now pleasant and safe. Most of Felix’ neighbors are black and Asian. Continue reading

Postcard from the end of America: Fort Indiantown Gap, PA

It’s remarkable that I’ve been friends with Giang for nearly four decades. We’ve spent but a year in the same state and, frankly, have little in common. Giang studied computer science, business administration and engineering technology. He makes more in a year than I do in ten. He drinks Bud Lite and recycles corny metaphors and analogies. A director of marketing, Giang actually told me, “I can sell a freezer to an Eskimo.” Continue reading

Obscured American: Rudy List the retired math professor

Though each life is rich, some are staggeringly so. Over four days in July, I had a series of conversations with Rudy List at his house in Dexter, Michigan. A 74-year-old retired math professor, Rudy introduced me to Hua Luogeng, Zitang Zhang and Terence Tao. In return, I told him about Otto Dix, Cindy Sherman, Honey Boo Boo and Jerry Springer. It was certainly not fair trade. Continue reading

Obscured American: Hank the small business financial advisor

I had spent four days in Ann Arbor, Dexter and Chelsea. This stay allowed me to experience a whiter and more Norman Rockwell Michigan. On two previous trips, I was confined to mostly black and car wrecked Detroit. Continue reading

Obscured American: J.J. the ex-pizza man and Young Lord

Responding to my recent articles about race, “Marx Karl” comments at Intrepid Report: “What is Asian racism? In Africa Indians brought by the British to Africa to fulfill middle management posts or run small enterprises treated the whites as superiors and the Africans as inferiors. So in Europe and the US some Asians play Uncle Tom and identify with whites against blacks other Asians who have been on the receiving end of white racism side with blacks [ . . . ] Continue reading

A view from Japan: An interview with Motoyuki Shibata

In Japan, even a serious writer may be seen on mass advertising, and a translator can become a star. One of Japan’s most famous intellectuals, Motoyuki Shibata is a specialist on American literature. He has translated books by Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Steven Millhauser and Stuart Dybek, among others. Shibata is also the editor of two popular literary journals, the Japanese-language Monkey and the English-language Monkey Business. His book of essays, The American Narcissus, won the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2005. Among the pieces are “Wonder If I’m Dead,” “The Half-Baked Scholar” and “Cambridge Circus.” Continue reading