DerykStauder

  My Old Copy Why We Need to be Eternally Vigilant As we slog through the Covid-19 pandemic, Albert Camus�s The Plague is back in the news, a novel about an epidemic spreading across the French Algerian city of Oran.  I have a hard-cover, Modern Library edition, list price $2.95, given to me by my girlfriend when I was in my twenties. At the time, being rash and impetuous, I found the book boring. Now, 50 years later, I have reread it. As a 74-year-old man, my sentiments lie with what Stephen Spender wrote in a New York Times Book Review in 1948, when the book was first published. He would say I had completely missed the point if I expected a flashy, spellbinding novel. According to Spender, The Plague is, first and foremost, a parable and a sermon, � of such importance for our time that to dismiss it in the name of artistic criticism would be to blaspheme against the human spirit.� ?1   It�s a message we desperately need to hear today! At the beginning of Camus�s novel...

  During the drought, the last remaining water hole behind my house "What one does not remember,"  James Baldwin reminds us,  "is the serpent in the garden  of  one's dreams."

 Cannon Beach, OR CC Jean Stimmell I have much in common with Eric Utne: We are both baby boomers with a similar take on life. I was a long-term subscriber to his Utne Reader : A ground-breaking magazine, sometimes described as a Readers Digest for the alternative press; it highlighted a whole range of publications from The Whole Earth Catalog to the East West Journal and writers from Robert Bly to Buckminster Fuller. Not surprisingly, I was excited about reading his new memoir, Far Out  Man. I had another pressing reason to read his book: From what I�d read about Eric, he was an eternal optimist, much like me, but the promo for his new book alleged he had lost hope.  I was eager to see what he had to say because I, too, have lost hope. But, in my case, it hasn�t disappeared, just transformed into something I feel is more meaningful in today�s world. As I found out when I read his book, we are still on the same wavelength: although he articulates his vision more eloque...