This is the blog for the Bentari Project.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Matters of Doubt is a darn good yarn! Author Warren C. Easley’s[1] first Cal Claxton mystery novel accomplishes several winning outcomes. Claxton is a former LA prosecutor turned attorney whose sympathy for the disenfranchised minority forges, if not forces him into the role of sleuth. He makes his way into your heart and then finds a way to make h...
Read full postFriday, October 30, 2015
We were studying English literature, Joseph Conrad in particular, specifically Lord Jim . It was a weighty tale, but Bentari and I, well, we found the reading light. Reading was one race that I could win from Ben, but we weren’t in a hurry to reach the last page—we were looking for Conrad’s gems. For instance, when I read this passage, lightning st...
Read full postFriday, October 30, 2015
He did not let go of things. His embrace, to me, seemed able to hold onto the world and its troubles—the mountains and deserts, the hopeless sea and its worried storms, and even the starry sky—so full of hope. I remembered Bentari’s favorite passage from Conrad’s Lord Jim . “I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been ...
Read full postSunday, October 11, 2015
The second after the car crash the silence explodes and that still shock wave sucks eardrums into convex distortions that assimilate the plundered brain and vacant soul—for a fraction of a second you are your basic self. An addict’s best high is her last flight or the trip she makes through screaming hell on hell-fired rocks all the way to the hair...
Read full postSunday, September 27, 2015
Angus Brown is 40-years old today. What in the world can his old-man do? How in the world does he know what to say? For starters, Angus, I am proud of you. This happy return of that happiest day Delivers a truth that is known far and wide. For you live your life in such grand ways That rivers of strangers flow to your side. I am no carpenter, but y...
Read full postSaturday, September 26, 2015
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. [1] had this to say upon reading the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay: “When I read this, I wondered whether Jefferson had heard of Mansfield’s great-niece Belle and whether she reminded him of his own mulatto children. Their story, like so many of our family stories, destroys the fiction of strict racial categories.” Be...
Read full postSaturday, September 05, 2015
King Leopold II[i] hired Henry Morton Stanley[ii] to follow the Congo River. The famous explorer was not drawing maps for the King. He was hoodwinking indigenous leaders to sign over all land rights to the great and beneficent Leopold! The King’s reign for the next 23-years was anything but great and beneficent. The Belgian Congo was called the “Cr...
Read full postSaturday, August 01, 2015
Challenges are rarely as bewildering as those confronting Stefan Zweig in 1942. He succumbed to them—a tragedy that coincided with the publishing of his memoir, The World of Yesterday. Read it and you will learn about a kind man who cherished personal freedom for everyone. All he wished for was the opportunity to study, to create and to share. You ...
Read full postSunday, July 26, 2015
The story of a slave’s life is expected to be a tortuous tale—a tale to learn from, a tale made heavy by immense sadness. The story of Phillis Wheatley’s [1] life as a slave is burdened by cruelty. It is also heavily weighted, ironically, by her short place of honor and of privilege. Was she treated as a piece of property? Yes. Was she kidnapped fr...
Read full postSaturday, July 18, 2015
Jacob George (1982-2014) [1] —the founder of Afghanistan Vets for Peace, died by his own hand 1-week after President Barack Obama released plans for his tactical strikes in northern Iraq and Syria. Jacob served three tours in what he then considered to be the ultimate service for his country. His song “Soldier’s Heart” beckons us to recognize the a...
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