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There is no simple way, no easy or uncomplicated way, to look into the face of a filthy old woman on the street. We are frightened or saddened or repelled, feel guilty if not resentful, and then we avert our eyes.
By Ann NietzkeAugust 1993Chloe looked at Big Daddy, huddled and quivering in her grandmother’s lap. Big Daddy, once a plump, nervous, annoying Chihuahua, was now a frail, nervous, annoying Chihuahua. Every so often he would snort and wheeze and gag, like an aging coal miner.
By Gwyn Ellen RubioMay 1993I did not begin training as a psychiatrist with an open mind. As strange as it might seem for someone beginning a career based on insight, I had resolved not to change. I was frightened that my personality might be pasteurized by the process, that forces would make of me a blank slate on which others would feel free to write their life stories.
By Keith Russell AblowApril 1993Ninety clear glass marbles, a suicide note, a deathbed confession
By Our ReadersFebruary 1993Facing Mike on my doorstep, dressed in my Lands’ End polo shirt and my all-cotton cargo shorts, I felt I was being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. Looking at this man, who must have been born in the late forties or early fifties, a man who grew up, as I did, on hula hoops and Twinkies and later the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and who now looked immeasurably old and broken, I knew we were feeling a similar pain just then. I knew he understood that we’d been through the same time and had come out differently.
By Owen E. DellJanuary 1993November 1991Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.
Daniel Berrigan
This body only appears to be an enclosure. It is actually a passageway — like an entry to a cave or a cathedral. It is quite the opposite of the way we’ve been taught to perceive it.
By Sy SafranskyOctober 1992A string of conflicted and limiting constructs, beliefs, and ideas has so dominated our awareness that it seems as if those ideas are real and nothing else exists. If we can dislodge and dismantle those disguised thought patterns, we can return our attention to the beauty and innocence of our life here.
By Stephen R. SchwartzOctober 1992When a person agrees to accept this value system — which means pursuing respect, understanding, caring, and fairness within oneself, while also requiring them from others — I can use that agreement to great effect.
By D. Patrick MillerSeptember 1992Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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