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Chattering Mind

For 16 years, journalist and Washington Monthly president Markos Kounalakis has been wanting to bring Mark Twain’s bitterly anti-war prose piece “The War Prayer” more fully into the public square. Kounalakis read and connected to the famous short story just as he himself was preparing to enter Afghanistan to cover the war there. This week,…

Here’s an excerpt from Twain’s story “The War Prayer.” It is the text of a dark, sardonic prayer uttered in church by a stranger who reveals to a gung-ho, pro-war community what real war often is. “O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near…

Get ready, parents. School art work is about to come home–heaps of tissue paper collages, posterboard paintings, and charcoal drawings. You’ll want to frame some, hang some, and then store everything you don’t pitch or recycle. In a feng shui workshop I once took with Nancy Santo Pietro, I learned that you can be a…

Bravo, Salon.com for running this symposium on what’s causing the seeming demise of the honey bee. The good news is that cell phone usage probably isn’t responsible. Bees may well be adapting to climate change and pesticide use. Says Wayne Esaias, an amateur beekeeper who also works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: “What…

It’s funny how online friendships work: you meet, you connect, you chatter on with the assumption that your cyber pals will be there forever. But then sometimes they vanish. So perhaps I’m not alone in my glee as I notice that CM reader Daria is back to posting her thoughts again! Daria! When you stopped…

Whether they loved her or loathed her, folks listened to anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, the mother of US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, a 24-year-old Humvee mechanic who was killed in 2004 after being based in Iraq for five days. On Memorial Day, Sheehan said she was quitting her tireless campaign against the war because she’d…

This morning, the radio news program Democracy Now was discussing a new documentary that sounds therapeutic and incredibly interesting since it analyzes how our leaders “spin” us into thinking that war is necessary. The spin has been perpetuated over the decades by both Republicans and Democrats. “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning…

It’s over, it was wonderful, it was one of the sweetest days of my life. I wish you could have been there because I know you would have enjoyed it tremendously. I am humbled, but also on top of the world. My son read from the Torah scroll so beautifully. The assistant rabbi and cantor…

Our caterer turned us on to an organic vineyard in Redwood Valley, CA, that uses ladybugs to keep pests away, producing a lovely LadyBug Red table wine that many of our evening party guests enjoyed. Our Kosher red for the synagogue kiddush was Ramon Cardova “Rioja,” a product of Spain. We did serve some 48…

Those are the words Keith Olbermann uses for every single guest on his MSNBC show, “Countdown.” I offer them now to you. Great thanks to Amy Cunningham and mazel tov in advance for her son’s bar mitzvah, great thanks to Valerie Reiss for pain-free editing and great photos, and great thanks to you, the Chattering…
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