For thirty-six years I kicked myself for blowing a chance to see my musical muse in concert. It was my summer break from college. I was backpacking solo in Europe and amassing emotional highs and lows. It was the kind of stuff my hero – the song-writer, poet, and bard Leonard Cohen – sang about. At least I liked to […]
This I Believe New England
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This I Believe New England – Faith & Compassion
This morning I learned that my chief – an African chief of a Muslim people – died. And while some of my co-religionists may frown upon the idea, tonight I shall say Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the dead – in his honor. For he was not only my chief – he was the very embodiment […]
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This I Believe New England – Cherished Mementos
CHERISHED MEMENTOS It is not my job as professor to make my students smile. But with Hana, I couldn’t resist the challenge. And so I gave her an old phone card. Hana would keep to herself in the back. She befriended few in class. She also was very serious. Serious in class debate. Serious in one-on-one chats. Serious even in the […]
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This I Believe New England – Shaking Black Hands
Back in the New York City subways, after two years in Niger, blacks no longer looked the same. Before the Peace Corps, straphangers of another color were invisible at best. Not that one made much eye contact with anybody, of any color, in the trains beneath Manhattan; but if there was one category of person […]
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This I Believe New England – Empathy
Empathy – real empathy – is a mysterious phenomenon. The poet Walt Whitman wrote, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” It is reasonable to ask whether we have the capacity to truly tune into other people’s experiences, particularly when they’re traumatic. Perhaps we get closest […]
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This I Believe New England: Winter
Here we are, right smack in the heart of another New England winter. For some, this stretch of months with early sunsets is filled with dread — frosty…
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This I Believe New England – Miracles
The nineteenth century novelist Joseph Conrad once wrote, “My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.” And that is exactly what this public radio series aims to do. Featured essayists stitch together […]
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This I Believe New England – On The Side of Love
It’s a truism, isn’t it, that life is filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, tugs to the right when we were planning to turn left. One measure of a life is how we cope with adversity. The poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took […]
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This I Believe New England – Fellowship In Disagreement
It’s no secret that we are surrounded by passionate, partisan, and divisive political and ideological debate. Our daily news and social media are saturated with all manner of vitriol and vituperation. Many of us, perhaps most of us, yearn for more civil discourse, where we can agree to disagree agreeably. The ancient Greek playwright Euripides got it right: […]
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This I Believe New England – Psychiatric Care for the Homeless
In recent years, so many of us have become keenly aware of people struggling with homelessness. We see them at traffic intersections, huddling in doorways, and sleeping under bridges. Many others are hidden from view. In Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, an impressive coterie of professionals spends their days and nights reaching out to those in need, offering […]
