I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH I met Nikki Giovanni when our respective book tours crossed paths many years ago. She is one of the most accessible, generous, and fierce warrior women on the planet, definitely written into my Book of the Blessed. Below is her chant-poem she spoke this morning at the convocation, the first meeting of the student body, faculty and administration since the massacre yesterday. (See...

In a horrorific event such as the Virginia Tech massacre, you can lay awake at night feeling an overwhelming sense of grief for those who were simply going about their routine daily business when their lives were mercilessly and brutally cut short. In the case of Virginia Tech, the grief is compounded by the fact that many of the murdered innocents were young people working on fulfilling their potential and...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Scary and tragic. Noises of shots extinguishing promising lives:

Look at the face above — because it’s the face of the student who has been identified as having mercilessly snuffed out 32 young lives at Virginia Tech. ABC NEWS: Cho Seung-Hui, the student who killed 32 people and then himself yesterday, left a long and “disturbing” note in his dorm room at Virginia Tech, say law enforcement sources. Sources have now described the note, which runs...

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés is a Psychoanalyst and Specialist in Critical Incident and Post Trauma Recovery, who developed psychological recovery protocol for the Armenian earthquake rescue, served at Columbine High School and community for four years after the massacre. She continues to work with 9-11 survivor families on both coasts. This morning, Dr. Estés released the complete protocol letter developed...

I caught some grief yesterday for my insta-post tying the Virginia Tech massacre to America’s sick obsession with guns. Several folks accused me of trying to make political hay and one right-wing critic harrumphed that I had not even let the bodies get cold before piling on. It turned out that this hypocritic was mightily stirring the pot at his own blog, but he had a point: When a grossly public tragedy...

Kevin Andre Elliot’s Slant Truth is one of my favorite blogs. I regret that I’m not linking to him under happier circumstances, but. His brother has gone missing. Literally, missing, and they think he might be dead. His name is Michael Patrick Vaughn, and they think he might be on the West Coast somewhere. It’s obviously a long-shot, but if anyone has any information on him, I know Kevin would...

It lessens the horror not one iota and I take no pride in a prescience borne of long experience, but I will not be surprised in the least that the wacko who gunned down 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus this morning before killing himself was a white male armed with street legal weapons who was not part of a well-regulated militia but had a head full of problems. It is probable that no gun law would have...

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reports on the Reclaiming America For Christ Conference. There’s a lot of interesting (in all senses) stuff in there, but I’m more curious about this passage from the FRC’s Tony Perkins: How is it that in our nation where Muslims account for about 6 million of the 300 million living in this country, and Christians comprise 100 million,...

Gere (Left) kisses Shetty during an AIDS awareness programme in New Delhi April 15, 2007. (REUTERS/Tanushree Punwani) Thousands of truckers cheered wildly as American actor Richard Gere kissed (Indian) actress Shilpa Shetty on her cheeks during an event to promote safe sex and raise AIDS awareness among a high-risk group, writes Prithwish Ganguly of the Reuters. “Hollywood star Gere had joined Shetty,...

In 2005, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman published a book, It’s My Party Too. The front jacket flap of the hard-cover edition summarizes her premise. Relentlessly pushing their rigid demands on abortion rights, stem cell research, the environment, and go-it-alone foreign policy, the far-right groups, whom [Whitman] calls social fundamentalists, are not only violating...

Research shows the US chastity programme, for which teenagers receive silver rings, has no influence on any future decision to have sex. Photograph: Jonathan Dyer/AP Recent findings have undermined President George W. Bush’s ‘keep zipped up’ stance. The Guardian reports: “It’s been a central plank of George Bush’s social policy: To stop teenagers having sex…The trouble...

Thanks so much! Jerusalem Post: Hidden Heroes

For the man or woman who has everything: watches made from pieces of the Titanic. Two immediate reactions: (1) We presume they are reliably waterproof. (2) This seems to be a fitting gift for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Steel and coal from the Titanic have been transformed into a new line of luxury wristwatches that claim to capture the essence of the legendary oceanliner which sank in 1912. Geneva watchmaker...

Pashtuns – circa 1879 What is the secret of the resilience and bravery of the fiercely independent Afghan tribes who keep battling until the very end when the alien forces come to subdue them? This question baffled all those who tried to conquer Afghanistan – the Mughal troops in the 16th and 17th centuries to the British in the 19th and Russians in the 20th centuries – and failed. And...

Children born to parents infected with HIV/AIDS virus place impressions of their palm as part of observing Candle Day at Freedom Foundation, a community care centre, at Kolathur. — Photo: S. Thanthoni (courtesyThe Hindu) With its attention riveted to “War-on-Terror”, the world is yet to wake up to the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) crisis that threatens to cripple a large section of...

The pang of sadness that I felt when I read this morning that Kurt Vonnegut had left this mortal coil was a bit deeper than the mere fact that like a lot of folks of my generation I went head over heels over everything this counterculture idol wrote. As it is, I work in a rare book and manuscript library that includes the papers of Seymour Lawrence, Vonnegut’s longtime literary agent and friend. I have...

Michael’s recent musings on how the United Kingdom has lost its mojo and whether it can get it back has set me to thinking about the United States and how abjectly corrupt it has become. There is barely a nook or cranny in the Land of the Free that hasn’t been tainted by inappropriate if not downright illegal conduct, be it influence peddling, graft, siphoning off monies for personal use, misuse...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Don Imus, the politically incorrect curmudgeon who has enjoyed a long career on radio and been a ratings builder in the mornings on MSNBC has been suspended — from the radio and MSNBC: After a career of cranky insults, radio star Don Imus was fighting for his job Monday following one joke that by his own admission went “way too far.â€? CBS Radio and MSNBC both said they were suspending Imus’...

And now we give you another inductee into The Moderate Voice’s prestigious Get A Life Club — this time giving an award to The Powers That Be at Tiverton Middle School in Tiverton, R.I: A Rhode Island public school has decided the Easter bunny is too Christian and renamed him Peter Rabbit, and a state legislator is so hopping mad he has introduced an “Easter Bunny Act” to save the bunny’s...

“Robert Clive of India.” There has been a wonderful response to Michael van der Galien’s post Britain’s Lost Soul. I must say here that President George W. Bush and his team have done an excellent job of brainwashing people that “evil” nations of Iraq and Iran would swallow the Western nations. And this fear has paralysed public discourse in the USA. (I am surprised that...

WORLD PEACE! Courtesy Shanup Gundecha The successful resolution of the British/Iranian naval hostage crisis once again highlights the need for tactful diplomacy to solve problems that may appear intractable. Whatever the provocation, the concerned parties must talk instead of saber-rattling which seems to have become a favourite pastime of the present residents of the White House. One wonders how long the American...

What has been particularly frustrating about the debate in Washington over Iraq is that everyone seems to be fighting one another and forgetting the fundamental mission of the war, writes Leon E. Panetta in an Op-Ed piece today in the New York Times. He was a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a member of the Iraq Study Group. “Whether one is for or against the war, the key to stability...