Kathleen Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. The post oranges by Kathleen Hellen appeared first on ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
I’ve been teaching the Holocaust for the better part of my career at university and beyond. It seems to me that in all of the chaos of this Trump administration, their most consistent policy thus far, maybe even their single most consistent policy, has been to foment antisemitism. The post Fomenting Antisemitism by Timothy Snyder appeared first on ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
When I look at the reactions of us Germans to the Hamas massacre, I think I recognize a repetition of the structure so familiar to me from the process of coming to terms with the Nazi era. Feelings are not wanted. The post Hard Feelings by Thomas Casagrande appeared first on ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
Emily Weiskopf (b. Syracuse, New York) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher based in Connecticut. She received a BFA from the Hartford Art School (CT) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Philadelphia/Rome, Italy). Weiskopf’s work has been featured in Artnet, Gallerist NY, and The Brooklyn Rail, and has been exhibited with M. David & Co. (NY); Spring Projects (NY), Shin Gallery (NY), Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and White Columns, among others. She was no...| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
It seems possible that this dulling may contribute to my current state of political fecklessness: while before I felt able to fight, now, with the situation seeming so much worse than in 2016, there are times I wish it would all just go away. I am used to being at least externally “okay,” even when many others are not. Whether rising above or cowering in fear, I lose my capacity to act from a grounded center. The post American Resistance: A Mayflower Meditation by Elizabeth Cutter Ev...| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
Roy Cohn brought his style of aggressive attacks to our campus. I too often saw him, an unattractive, thin man, agitated and angry, standing on a platform, holding a megaphone, giving speeches to my fellow students in the quad, yelling at the top of his lungs, “The red sea of Communism is spreading over us all!” as he grimaced and pointed below to the crowd of booing students. As one of the few girls in this crowd, I stood among them, appalled, but silent and terrified. The post Red Scare...| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
... While the Declaration cannot tell us how to respond to tyranny in our time, it can perhaps encourage us as the actions of the Trump administration become ever more lawless and the danger in the nation mounts. The post We Have Been Here Before: Reading the Declaration of Independence in 2025 by Richard B. Grose appeared first on ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action
I realize now that I am composed of the full inventory of the slights and dehumanizing aspects of racism I have known. But why did this story return so suddenly? Was it because many people were talking about racism and anti-Semitism? Why did this early event cause so much anguish and trauma in me thirty-five years after it happened? Was it because all nuns represented a kind of goodness in my six-year-old mind, a goodness that was shattered in an instant? The post The Wallet by Douglas H. Whi...| ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action