Monthly archive October, 2011
Scenes From an Occupation
Nora Connor spent the wee hours of Friday morning in Zucotti Park, waiting for Bloomberg to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Below she documents dawn in the park and the breaking news that the eviction had been called off. Some of the images are dark or hard to see; they all convey the unfolding...
Single Mother Advantage
Rick Santorum to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on the radio yesterday, about how single mothers are the government-dependent Democratic Party base:
Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: it is single mothers who run a household. Why? Because it’s so tough economically that they look to the government for help and...
99 Muslim Comic Sunday
Mary Valle: The 99, a comic series created by Naif Al-Mutawa, has gained popularity in the rest of the world but run into some suspicion here in the US. It's about 99 superheroes who each embody one of the 99 Islamic attributes of God, but isn't explicitly Islamic. Also: take note! 50 of...
Occupy Writers
The Revealer founder Jeff Sharlet hustled up a list of writers who support the Occupy movement on Wall Street and around the world. Read it here: www.occupywriters.com
The Radical Notion that Women Experience War Too
Amy Levin: “[In] the new form of war that’s evolved since the end of the cold war where it isn’t two armies standing and facing each other, women and children really are the most effected by this type of warfare,” said actor Geena Davis in a behind the scenes looks at a new PBS series...
God is at the Table
Amy Levin: The days when the telephone created a sense of awe-inspiring enchantment are long gone. And our excitement over whatever we mean when we say “new media” - twitter? ipads? - has a decreasing shelf life of about a week. But we can still gawk at those using new media to meet their religious...
No speaking for you!
Ashley Baxstrom: Richard Dawkins – evolutionary biologist, author and outspoken critic of religion – has been banned from a Michigan country club after they “discovered” that he is, in fact, an atheist.
Meet Me In New Jersey
Tomorrow I'll be giving the Humanities Forum talk at Stevens Institue of Technology. You should come by. "How We die: The Religious and Social Politics of Dying in America."
I’ll Never Grow So Old Again:
Ditching the Drugs But Still Looking for the Transcendence
An exclusive excerpt from Peter Bebergal's Too Much To Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, published last week. Bebergal will be reading from Too Much at the NYU Bookstore on Wednesday, October 12th, at 5 pm. Come on by; he'll sign a copy for you. For more details, click here.
By Peter Bebergal
In 1882 the...
Practice, Theology and Identity at #OWS
Courtney Bender writes at The Scoop:
We could even say that occupiers' refusal to give uncomplicated answers to the question of whether their motivations are rooted mainly in religious, secular, economic or political identities holds up a useful mirror to the very messy, complicated social and economic morass that they critique. This is another way of...
First, Do No Evangelizing
Ashley Baxstrom: New in the world of right-wing medical care: meet the American College of Pediatrics, “a national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children.”
Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of psychology at Grove City College and Clinical Advisory Board member of the American Association of...
In Praise of Capital
Amy Levin: Marching down Lafayette yesterday, surrounded by hundreds of #occupywallstreet protesters, I experienced what many in my shoes might call a “secular spirituality,” as we ritually chanted in exhilarated unison. “We are the 99%”--or as my cohorts and I chanted it, “you are the 99%”--occupied the street-as-stage, sending our...
