Christopher Columbus Syndrome

"You just can’t come in the neighborhood. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here? Get the fuck outta here. Can’t do that!"

Rant excerpt by Spike Lee, February 2014
Brooklyn Love artwork by Adam Suerte © 2014

Tea And Misery

"...our own age is essentially one of understanding, and on the average, perhaps, more knowledgeable than any former generation, but it is without passion. Every one knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is willing to move."

Text from The Present Age, 1846

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2014

Quote Of The Week

"Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them."

More Than A Glance

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at you, and I sigh.

A Drinking Song by W.B. Yeats

Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark © 1987

No More Mister Nice Girl

Maggie Estep

Rest In Peace

"thank you i’m so grateful thank you i don’t know how i can convey how thankful i am i’m bending over with gratitude the sky is pouring itself down my throat because i’m wide open because i’m so glad i’m HAPPY i wasn’t always HAPPY in fact i used to be a miserable wretch but i realize this was an idiotic waste of time i climbed out of the morass of love gone wrong and the fact that this world is not a fair place i had to say ‘fuck it’ to suicide, self-obsession, perverse maudlinism and the acme of melancholy to hell with sticking my head in the oven i’m HAPPY i’m ridiculously vengefully HAPPY i’m ripped apart by sunshine i’m ecstatic i’m leaping i’m cutting off all my limbs i’m doing circus tricks with forks i’m breathing fire i’m a radiant asshole and i’m HAPPY i’ve got joy shooting from the roots of my hair down to my violent red toenails i’m HAPPY to be here to be alive to be here to be alive i’m here i’m alive and i’m HAPPY. thank you."

Hopes For Little More

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2014

Quote Of The Week

"He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."

The Change Has Come

Quote Of The Week

"America's radicals are to be found wherever and whenever America moves close to the fulfillment of its democratic dream. Whenever America's hearts are breaking, there American radicals were and are. America was begun by its radicals. America was built by its radicals. The hope and future of America lies with its radicals."