Author: Barbara

I watched the Academy Award nominated documentary Attica which is free as part of Black History Month. I knew about the 1971 rebellion inside Attica, but I never realized how brutal it truly was. It is extremely hard to watch; the film is a very graphic history lesson. It certainly deserves an Oscar! A warning–it

I was surprised to discover that Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor has written children’s books. Her latest is Just Help. Out of curiosity, I signed up for a live zoom conversation between Justice Sotomayor and America Ferrera about writing the book. The Justice especially impressed me when she responded to three children from the audience who

I attended a zoom program with Pádraig Ó Tuama, Poet Laureate of OnBeing. He did a close reading of Tracy K. Smith’s poem Unrest in Baton Rouge. The poem is a response to Johanthan Bachman’s iconic photograph taken at a protest in the wake of the shooting by police of of Alton Sterling and Philando Casitle.

Every year since 2017, I have loved the The Universe in Verse. This year there is a new iteration: “For four seasons, it remained a live gathering — thousands of embodied universes of thought and feeling, huddled together in a finite space built in a faraway time when Whitman’s living atoms walked the streets outside.

Here’s an article for poetry lovers. Ari Banias’ book, A Symmetry, was published in October, 2021. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ari-banias-interview/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2012.30.2021&utm_term=daily

Funny Boy gave me an opportunity to explore a culture I know nothing about. The story is set in Sri Lanka during the late 70’s and early 80’s when the Tamil-Sinhalese conflicts exploded into full-blown bloody civil war (1983-2009). In reading the novel, once again I realized that I know little about most of the