The creative approach to language, the expressive urge, the impact of a whim to let […]

In a speech to a packed room at Villanova University, during the university’s three-day celebration of the legacy and work of St. Thomas of Villanova —a celebration that includes scholarly presentations, community gatherings, this keynote address and a day of service in which thousands fan out across the region to do charitable work—, E.J. Dionne called for a politics rooted in conscience and compassion for our fellow human beings. The acclaimed journalist, scholar and Washington Post columnist rooted his talk in Catholic Social Teaching and spoke of an historical drive, in the US, toward comprehensive social justice.

Through the work of writing, I have learned first and foremost that nothing is what […]

Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.

The Amazon Kindle DX is a beautiful device. Its design is user-friendly, intuitive and cohesive. It is clean-edged, minimal and thinner than many major magazines. Its format size is comfortable and makes tactile sense; it feels like something you hold in order to read, giving it a useful aesthetic kinship to books or magazines, a vast improvement on smaller e-reading devices. It is, in point of fact, far more comfortable than planting yourself in front of a computer monitor to read large amounts of text.

libertad aquella musa
aquel ritual de autodesconcepción
el reto que guía o confunde
siguiendo líneas que no vemos
finos hilos de ópalo y vapor
matriz y desvergüenza…

We must, in this age of integration and complexity, work to recognize those areas where we can learn from cultures that build into our own, that enrich or sustain us, that give humanity, broadly, its metaphysical sense, its creative-adaptable quality. We know France as a place of great culture and profound philosophical insights and a highly developed legal system. But we tend not to think of France as a country whose most famous culture is simply one of many that came to dominate, and very really did stamp out the other cultures competing for survival, in a fractious agrarian society outside the capital, in the 19th century.

Poetry is the frontier where language in use comes in contact with future meaning, and in the process, when best executed, brings a wealth of transcendent truths into the present. Poetry is relevant to all uses of language, though there may be trends that suggest popular culture is looking to new forms of poetic activity to replace specific old models: many musical artists now play the role of mythic historian or wandering troubadour, but poetry is not confined to these purposes.

Knowledge is wealth in its purest form, fully possessed by and inseparable from the individual. As noted in previous sections of this essay, the application of deliberately obtained knowledge to complex situations establishes the sovereignty of the individual. Variety is wealth insofar as it offers an array of options which may be combined in countless ways to confront the problems of living in the world. Variety in knowledge offers adaptability, and adaptability is the key to survival and prosperity at all levels. Ultimately, resilience, rooted in such flexibility, is the real meaning or value of wealth, of any kind.

La exposición y seminario “El mundo escrito”, último capítulo de Café Sentido, culminó en la mesa redonda sobre los miles de idiomas en vías de extinción. La charla siguió la política y las metas del proyecto de forma excepcional: una mesa redonda, diálogo informal, puntos de vista apasionados, y la oportunidad de aprender, el uno del otro.

El mundo está escrito sobre una tela de voces que ninguna puede ser en sí más que un hilo, un cruce, un fortalecimiento muscular del éter. Está construido de gestos y formas, figuras tanto desnudas como revestidas para otro fin… en cada escena se ve una ráfaga de trasparentes incertezas que proponen a su manera y en el ritmo que les consten las circunstancias, texto que es también cuerpo, sangre, oxígeno, hierro, ley, contratiempo, y sagaz paciencia.

Si las tendencias actuales se realizan, en menos de un siglo, más de 3.500, la mitad de todos los idiomas actualmente hablados, desaparecerán. La civilización humana está enfrentando el momento de mayor peligro para las culturas más locales y periféricas, y será necesario tomar en cuenta lo que se va a perder en este proceso de purgación involuntaria y extinción.