Today March 21, is World Poetry Day, a UNESCO International Day which ‘celebrates one of humanity’s most treasured forms of cultural and linguistic expression and identity.’ Started in 1999, this day is recognized and celebrated by any and all, as we are all connected by the word, all able to share in the honesty and grace of the poem. With each word precisely chosen, the poem has the power to radiate a sense of humanity.
As of press time, we are in peak hoodie season. At some point, you may sit around in a bar with civilians and loved ones, and the question is sure to arise. “Why do you skaters tie your hoodie strings?” There’s a reason for this, or maybe there is not. It’s an unspoken thing to keep a kit tied. However, besides just looking cool, I’ve never had an explanation for this.
I'm going to do something I never do. I'm going to write this, and I'm going to stop writing it, and then I'm going to press 'publish' before I read it back. I want you to know how I feel right now. And I want to say exactly what's on my mind. I don't know why I have to write the same things over and over, and I don't know why thousands of years of history isn't good enough to motivate a shift or a sea change.
As the 59th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy approached, I often hear the question posed last month by NBC News, “What are they hiding?” With 16,000 plus documents in the JFK Records Collection still containing redactions—11,275 of them held by the CIA—the question is not only appropriate. It is troublesome. If the official theory of a lone gunman is correct, as our leading editors and academic historians insist, why doesn’t the government release all its records and prove it has nothing to hide?
In 1998, a group of scholars calling itself the Jesus Seminar published a list of its conclusions regarding the life of Yeshua ben Yosef, also known as Jesus Christ. Using a system of colored beads to rank their relative confidence in assertions made in scriptures, apocrypha, historical chronicles, letters, and archeological records, the Jesus Seminar had decided (quoting from Wikipedia): Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great.