I’ve recently returned with my teenage-son from a two-week road trip. (His dad’s currently traveling in China.) We drove from South Dakota to see my parents in North Carolina, with many stops along the way….
Read More
Empty seats at the National Mall prior to the inauguration (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters) Today I will not attend the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. Nor will I watch it on television or listen to it…
WAKING IN TRUMP’S AMERICA Jan Steckel The Statue of Liberty’s arm is tired. She may have torn her rotator cuff. She still has dual citizenship, wonders if her passport is in order. She imagines lowering…
I submitted this piece some days ago to run in my local paper, The Brookings (SD) Register. But it’s likely to be obsolete before it’s run, since Mr. Trump is so quickly squandering my good…
This is a difficult day. I will spend it writing. I will spend it hoping, and praying in my way, that the man just elected President of the United States might, with our help, prove…
Note: This blog post was submitted today as a speak-out to the Brookings (SD) Register, my local newspaper. Imagine a large piece of prime farmland where your relatives have lived for generations, getting married, working hard,…
I’m trying to finish a novel. I’m under contract to produce a poetry anthology. I have a speech to prepare. No shortage of things to do. But sometimes a writer has to take time to…
I’m writing to ask your help. Perhaps you’ve been following the strong nonviolent resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, particularly on the part of native peoples who have established the Red Warrior Camp in its…
The following opinion piece was published today in The Brookings Register (Brookings, SD), my town’s newspaper. I composed and submitted it just prior to the recent killings in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas. We’re just…
Too much grief. Too much hate. The killing of Alton Sterling, the killing of Philando Castile, the police ambush in Dallas … these ongoing tragedies make clear that our nation is diseased. The disease…
Out of sorrow over ongoing terrorism, the latest being the attacks in Brussels, I reblog this poem by Rumi from A Year of Being Here, my old poetry project. That project is now ended. If…
[This is a copy of a speak-out I submitted to the Brookings (SD) Register. It was published on March 15, 2016. Corrections made on March 16.] The other night I was cooking supper with my…
My Latest Books
