This is the blog for the Bentari Project.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Jane Goodall was on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN program “GPS.” The video [1] and the transcript [2] are available online. Here is Jane’s explanation when Mr. Zakaria questions her about the little stuffed toy that she carries with her where ever she goes: GOODALL: I call him Mr. H. He was given to me 28 years ago by a man named Gary Horn. Gary was blinded...
Read full postMonday, January 28, 2019
Jane Goodall was on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN program “GPS.” The video [1] and the transcript [2] are available online. The gentle woman opens by recounting her life’s dream since childhood. “And so I was 10 years old when I had a dream. I will grow up, go to Africa, live with wild animals and write books about them. And everybody laughed at me.” Dr. Ja...
Read full postThursday, January 03, 2019
Norm and I went to high school together in Portland, Oregon in the 1960s. Like most boys of those days, our fathers were combat veterans of WWII. And when Norm and I and all our friends finished school, we still had warfare to contend with. In one way or another, human militarism interrupted our lives. If not for Facebook, I may not have reconnecte...
Read full postMonday, December 24, 2018
Ruben told me that he wanted me to have a poem of his. He handed me a folded page of tablet paper that I still possess. I read the poem aloud for grandpa and Ruben and said it was beautiful. The call is strong on Christmas Eve. So I share Ruben’s wish to a world in need—as much today as in 1983 when he put the page into my hand! Too Far to Bethlehe...
Read full postSunday, December 23, 2018
Words of William Stafford [1] written on — 16 August 1955 “I belong to a small fanatical sect. We believe that current ways of carrying on world affairs are malignant. We believe that armies, and the kind of international dealings based on armed might, will be self-perpetuating to a certain point — and that that point may bring annihilation. Armies...
Read full postSaturday, December 08, 2018
Bentari is a ghost story, among other things. It opens with a murder. The victim’s survivors carry on with a mighty power billowing their sails—the power of ghostly memories on the wind. Ghosts are important in our lives. We gather on a dark night during this Season. We drink cocoa, watch Christmas ships sailing by—and we tell ghost stories. Storie...
Read full postSunday, November 25, 2018
She pulled me out of the pond In bright flowered skirts she trimmed our nails and taught us the magic of popping corn Imagination as panacea Progressive when Republican devoted to Dr. Spock, Civil Rights, fair housing and all the many Ministries Committees and Urban Causeways Marching for Peace at the Pentagon! Not Republican telling me, “It could ...
Read full postSunday, November 04, 2018
Listen to a song of hope, “We Are the Boat” [1] by following the link below. The lyrics are here. Somos el barco, somos el mar, Yo navego en ti, tu navegas en mi We are the boat, we are the sea, I sail in you, you sail in me The stream sings it to the river, the river sings it to the sea The sea sings it to the boat that carries you and me Somos el...
Read full postTuesday, October 30, 2018
that old feeling the empty well taunts the coin clock arms fan comfort through souls until they petrify and day blinks into sunken night steam builds up the furnace freezes cars take a hike and somebody crossing the street outside turns into a god-damned werewolf the recurring technique terrifies the bloated tongue into tragic comedy knees lock tig...
Read full postWednesday, October 03, 2018
Why did Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. study Percy Shelley’s poetry? Because non-violence and peaceful resolution shower avid readers of Shelley’s verse. His place in history, in a life too short, nestled deep within a coincidental nexus of the Age of Reason and the Romantic Era. Here is one stanza from Canto Seventh[1] of “The Revolt ...
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