Not very smart"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) I have just watched a film
-
-
Looking out: To death"At the door of life, by the gate of breath,There are worse things waiting for men than death." — Algernon Charles Swinburn On August 13, at 10:01 am, I folded a piece of art paper into a makeshift
-
Looking out: Sisters and brothersThe warden said to me the other day,"Why come the black boys don't run offlike the white ones do?"I lowered my jaw and scratch my headand said (innocently I think) "Well, suh,I ain't for
-
Looking Out: The harvest"That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grip of the day.That major Voice. That adult Voice. forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other
-
Looking out: The children"Standing with reluctant feet,/ Where the brook and river meet,/ Womanhood and childhood fleet!" — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 180782 ARE THESE CHRISTIANS? They demand that I kill many others
-
Tigers"The identity crisis ... occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge ... some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of ... childhood and the
-
Looking out: Quashing a rumour"Humor's ear, in the listener, is very much like beauty's eye, in the beholder." — Irving Elmer Bell. If you have something important to do right now, you should not be reading
-
Looking out: Hopelessness and despairHave you ever wondered about the topics that prisoners discuss late at night, when the prison is relatively quiet and locked down? This will be the first of a series of excerpts from
-
Looking out: Lessons learnedI know a wonderful woman whose words of wisdom I want to share with you. Her name is Barbara Chapman-Woods. I regret that this column lacks space to present a greater number of her thoughts. My
-
Desertion"When I say that we have begun to desert and abandon one another, I mean that African-American men should start refusing to kill and maim each other. No, I am not suggesting that we start killing Caucasian men,
-
Extremely angryWhen I become very angry, in this tiny cell, I am often taken to an ageing childhood that too quickly ended. More often than not, I am drive to the reading of poetry. Sometimes, after a few lines read aloud,
-
Looking out: Gushing with gratitude"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat [in much the same way that friendship] ... is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house.