Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman – these, and others, were the founders of the early American Renaissance in the first part of the nineteenth century. Thoreau, of course, is famous for “Walden”, the book he wrote of his two-year experience of living at Walden Pond. He wrote: “I went to the woods […]
America has always provoked a Civil War. It is the nature of the ideal: brotherhood, sisterhood, equality, compassion like a river surging through blood-soaked fields. War at each moment, within our very own breasts. Shall we advance? Staring defeat in the face, to muster courage and go for what has never yet been given birth […]
The dinosaurs that once roamed and terrorized the Earth – did somebody plan them? Did God, sitting and pondering on his throne, envision them in his lordly plan? There were no thoughts of peace and brotherhood coursing through tyrannosaurus rex’s brain, only the ferocious gnashing of jaws and teeth, and insatiable hunger – a penchant […]
Emeryville, California, a small city lying in a corridor between Berkeley and Oakland. This is the home of Pixar Animation Studios, and other software and biotech companies. I stopped here today, and one of people I talked to was a woman named Jennifer, with whom I had a very interesting twenty-minute conversation. Jennifer felt that […]
Port Costa, California. A ghost town, population about 200, once a burgeoning wheat shipping port on the Carquinez Strait, north of San Francisco. Weekends it’s a gathering place for bikers and tourists. A POEM FOR TODAY: Dreams die, too. They can grow to an enchanting vividness, flowers in bloom, then in the next instant, go […]
To the Youth of America: Know that you are immortal. In your very body, your present circumstances, your world, you carry forth the hopes and dreams of all of humanity. Raise your vision to the eternal. Create a world that has never been known before. Forget all creeds, all dogmas, all constricting visions of what […]
I’m standing near a statue of Jack London, in Jack London Square, Oakland, California. As a novelist (his works included such world famous novels as “The Call of the Wild”, “White Fang”, and “The Sea Wolf”), London’s life spanned the later 1800’s and the early years of the twentieth century. His works often portray a […]
America is the promise of the self. It is the unfolding, finally, of everything that was imagined or dreamed. It is finding the very core of the universe, and all the gods and demons and stars and suns and galaxies, within one’s very own heart. Look into the mirror. Who is there? Ultra powerful reflector […]
Poetry reading. Valona Deli, Crockett, California _________________________ THE PEOPLE TO COME Life unfolding in immense diversity. Horses and dogs and cats and alligators and chimpanzees and birds in a whirl and the whole incredible parade of good and evil characters, villains, do-gooders, shopkeepers, business men in suits, the stars of our world, and war and […]
Today I stopped by Crockett, California, a small town of about 3000, situated near the Carquinez Bridge which leads over the Carquinez Straits towards Napa wine country. Crockett is like a small town from out of the past, but a very homey, friendly place, with lots of artists of one kind or another living here. […]