Nothing

You have seen the world and all you saw was nothing,
All you have said and heard, that too is nothing:
Running from pole to pole, there was nothing,
And when you lurked at home, there was also nothing.

~ Omar Khayyam, #102 in Avery and Heath-Stubbs.

Whites, Jews, and Us

Every so often, someone steps forward to speak the truth to power.

Hadji Murat

Tolstoy's late novella of the Caucasus was the culmination of his genius: This was the death that was brought to my mind by the crushed thistle in the ploughed field.

Why I Am A Tolstoyan

In Chapter 15 of his late masterpiece Hadji Murat, Leo Tolstoy savages Czar Nicholas I in a fashion that remains as politically relevant as ever:

The blatant, unceasing flattery of those around him had so far detached him from reality that he was no longer aware of his own inconsistency and ceased to relate his words and actions to reality, logic, or plain common sense, fully convinced that all his decisions, however senseless, unjust and inconsistent they were in fact, became sensible, just and consistent simply by virtue of having been made by him.

To Those Celebrating

Good Gray Walt

A brief video about Whitman in celebration of his 200th birthday (May 31, 2019).