The Spiritual Music of Hawaii
Even given its colonial past and present day kitsch, Hawaii remains both an earthly paradise and a place of natural numinous power. This is evident in its variety of spiritual musical idioms. Here is a taste of some of them, culled from a Smithsonian Festival a few years back. Aloha!
Profile: Jules Feiffer
From his “Sick, Sick, Sick” book to the Village Voice, the Phantom Tollbooth, biting political satire and beyond, Jules Feiffer is known for his beautiful simple lines that bring often neurotic characters to life in both funny and heartbreakingly human ways. Here we get a taste of this American treasure in his own words, and […]
The Genocidal Mentality: Why Good People Do Horrible Things
Not everyone who participates in genocide is a through-and-through evil person. Yet there is something in us, which, given the right circumstances and psychological wounds, can erupt into murderousness on a vast social scale. Such was the case in Nazi Germany, for example, and such was certainly the case in Rwanda in 1994, when over […]
Grieving Vets Remember Their War
For many Americans, Veterans Day means merely a long weekend of relaxation or a parade of patriotic display and brouhaha. But for many of the veterans who fought and killed in war, the psychological wounds engendered by the carnage continues long after the guns have gone silent. I asked a group of everyday vets, many […]
The Status of Women in Israel
Due to religion, socialism, the Zionist ideal, the militarization of the society, Western feminism, Arab culture and many other factors, Israeli women have complex competing factors that inform their self-image and their social roles. This is a half hour documentary I did for National Public Radio back in the 1990s that is still relevant today.
Gary, West Virginia: A Coal Town Flickers Out
At its peak, the town of Gary was completely alive with the sound of coal mining, lunchtime whistles, and the ethnic music that its immigrant laborers made during their rare off hours. US Steel had built the town, and the workers were proud to be there, albeit under very difficult, even backbreaking and dangerous conditions. […]
Karme Choling Tibetan Buddhist Community in Vermont
Tibetan Buddhism has changed and blossomed in the American context. Nowhere has it taken deeper root than in the Karme Choling (Tail of the Tiger) center in Barnet Vermont, in the heart of the Green Mountains. This is not a monastery; men and women live together, cook together, make drama together and walk a path […]
The Doo Wop Revival
Oyez oyez ooh bop she-bop ooh bop she BAM! Doo wop was a great musical form that teens loved and parents often detested. In any case. its melodiousness has resurfaced big time on the revival circuit. This story here is one from one I attended at a cheesy (grand) venue in Atlantic City.
“All-Seeing Eye of God” Goes from Blue to Brown
The Eye is also in the eye of the beholder. When Saint Jerome’s, a church in the South Bronx, was constructed at the turn of the 20th century, it was built by immigrant artisans, mostly from Ireland and Italy, where the human eyes were often blue. So of course, they imagined the All-Seeing Eye of […]
Black Mountain Kentucky and Mountaintop Strip Mining
The Kentucky coal region is a tough area with its own culture, its own natural beauty, and its endless seams of coal, many of which lie underneath the ground on mountains, rather than below ground. Many mining companies have taken to shaving off the top of the mountains, but the slag and the unsightliness and […]
Spirituality and the Dying Process (documentary)
Almost all the world’s religions and spiritual paths agree: how you you live is how you die, so you better get ready. This long form doc explores the wisdom of several perspectives on this urgently relevant topic. Listen, laugh, and get going! Includes lots of talk with Ram Das and Steven Levine, Robert Thurman, and […]
Ram Das on Spirituality and the Dying Process (RAW INTVW)
Ram Das aka Richard Alpert, the author of “Be Here Now,” is one of the spiritual giants of the 20th and 21st century. This is a raw interview I did with him in connection with a 20 minute story I was doing for VOA about spirituality and the dying process, and how several spiritual tradition […]
Nature and New Yorkers
There is nature IN New York, there is nature as TRANSMUTED through the sensibility of New Yorkers, and there is New Yorkers AS nature herself. This piece explores them all. Another love letter to my Gotham home.
The Pentacle and the Wand: Contemporary Witchcraft in America
The witch has come in for some pretty hard knocks in previous centuries, but lately there has been a resurgence of interest in what she has to offer both as a way of seeing, and a way of being that is female, strong, earthy, connected and wise. This is a half hour documentary that explores […]
The Mormon “Hill of Cumorah” Pageant
Every year, upwards of 700 Mormons take over the hill in upstate New York where they believe their founder, Joseph Smith, discovered the golden tablets making up the Book of Mormon. They reenact the history of the world and the history of their people on into the Future in ‘them thar hills,’ and believe me, […]
Children Ponder the Gettysburg Address
Often praised as the greatest speech of all tine, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863) still resonates and moves Americans who hear it and memorize it. The famous words were the subject of a teaching unit for sixth graders at the John Eaton School in Washington DC, which culminated in a recital and some interviews […]
Chinese and Jewish Ma Jong Cultures
In New York, one can walk through both solidly Jewish neighborhoods and completely Chinese neighborhoods and hear the same strident, even merry, clickety clack of ma jog tiles. Players in both worlds have developed their own cultures and phrasing. For instance, the Chinese phrase for the sound the tiles make when they are mixed up […]
Capital Punishment in America
To Kill or Not to Kill? This question lies at the heart of an American debate, and calls forth fundamental values and opinions about the sanctity of life and the sanctity of justice. This 1995 doc, which features once condemned men, as well as the late Sister Helen Prejean (who figured prominently in “Dead Man […]
Buddhism in the USA
Buddhism, once thought exotic has been mainstreaming at the rate of mind. As with other cultures, Buddhism has moved through our culture without force, but by adapting itself to the strengths and shortfalls with what it finds. This piece, which features Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, the late Rick Fields, David Phillips, Helen Tworkov, Sogyal Rinpoche […]
Columbus: Man and Myths
Explorer. Hero. Genocidal Conqueror. Genius. Inventor. Adventurer. Fool. Prophet. All these names have been used to describe the “discoverer” of America. But what do we really know about the man who sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and ninety two? This long form doc, explores the many faces of Columbus as he has come […]