A rare victory for the forces of good over the last two weeks: faced with the refusal of South African cargo unions to unload a shipload of weapons destined for Zimbabwe, the People's Republic of China has (apparently) decided to bring the ship back home. The heroism of the dock workers and their union, the South African Transport Workers Union, is a stirring reminder of the possibilities of nonviolent resistance to evil.

In a world crammed so chock full of stupidities that some days it seems ready to burst, one in particular which has been annoying me for literally decades is a lyric from Bob Geldof’s 1984 famine-relief benefit track which goes, Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

I was at the mall recently, buying socks for myself and thinking about what to buy for my co-workers for Christmas. I'm in denial about getting presents for my family. In one department store, I overheard a woman saying to her friend in a NY/NJ accent, “nothing in this store is saying 'buy me.'” So, I didn't come home totally empty-handed. Anyway, if the holiday pressures are getting you down, as they are me, here's an option: make...

I never liked the term World Music. As an adjective, “world” seems to carry a false pretension to greater warmth and caring than its more neutral predecessor “international” did. Also I suspect some condescension and unexamined exoticism lurks in the phrase. In the literal sense all music is from the world, of course, so really what one is saying is “from the rest of the world,” an emphasis that implies place of origin is either all this h...

What I did on my Printculture vacation—pack books, prepare for moving van, repaint house for new tenants, clean out basement, unload truck, unpack books, weed garden, mow lawn—and all through, think about the things I wasn’t doing: teaching and writing. Like a T-shirted St. Francis, I lectured to the crickets and blackbirds and packing boxes, on: narratology, Faulkner, St. Bartholomew’s Day, rational choice theory, electronic publishing, terza...

(Or: Which charge takes precedence?) [formerly: Inspirer of Genocide. And Plagiarist? And Sloppy Reader?] A fine red dust floats in the air in Rwanda, the result of the slow attrition of volcanic rock. It permeates your clothes and shows up on your bath-towel. It’s a strangely inorganic trace to find associated with a country whose most potent image in the mind is still, twelve years after the event, the schoolyards and churches carpeted with...