Billy Blake's Trial: Lila Vogt

In "Billy Blake's Trial," essayist Brian Doyle describes why he put so many years into the study of William Blake, poet and printer:

"Because he told the truth.... Because, when he knew he was going to die, he lay in his bed singing softly. ... Because, even though he claimed much of his work was dictated whole to him by angels and prophets, he edited heavily. Because he and his wife used to sit naked in their garden and recite passages from Paradise Lost. Because, when he was asked to recite his poems at parties, he got up and removed his coat and sang his lyrics aloud while dancing around the room, which is why he was subsequently not invited to parties anymore. Because he taught his wife, a grocer's daughter, to read. ... Because he bought a new pencil two days before he died. Because the very last thing he drew was his wife's face.

It is this last detail that catches my heart."

Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: Willie Hensley

This is Willie Iggiagruk Hensley. I have been asked to read this passage from my recent book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, about current efforts to restore Iñupiat Ilitqusiat -- Iñupiat Values:

"I knew that the Iñupiaq were not a people who gave up in the face of struggle. Our people had made a life on the farthest fringe of the polar world. We had fought cold and deprivation, and through the ingenuity of the mind we had created implements and art from stone, flint, jade, ivory, bone, and wood and every usable part of the living world that helped us to survive. We had even turned snow into shelter and sod into a palace of warmth. Through trial and error, we had mastered the environment and passed on that knowledge through five hundred generations.
...
"It wasn't enough to claim our lands, we had to claim our ways of thinking, acting, and living -- the ways my mother Naungagiaq and her elderly friends and relations instilled in me, and that taught me patience, the ability to withstand pain and deprivation without self-pity, and the camaraderie of common effort. This was the true spirit of our people, and this was what was being resurrected."

A Boring Evening at Home: Robin Dern

Gerda Weissmann Klein received an Oscar for the documentary One Survivor Remembers, the story of her experience in the camps of World War II. In her book, A Boring Evening at Home, Mrs. Klein writes:

"In the glare of spotlights and amid the blaze of jewels, I held an Oscar in my hand, but my thoughts harked back to the icy, merciless winter days when I was on a death march during the last bitter months of World War II, holding a battered, rusty bowl in my hands. I was praying that when I finally got to the front of the line, there would be some food left in the kettle. And if the ladle went a little deeper and by some miracle brought forth a potato, I would be a winner!

I could not help but think that I do not want my grandchildren -- or any children -- to live in a world in which a potato is more valuable than an Oscar. Nor do I want them to live in a world in which an Oscar is so important that nobody cares whether some people still do not have a potato."

Blessed Unrest: Guadalupe Marroquin

In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken writes:

"We are made aware of the proverbial forks in the road of life from an early age. Whether at commencement or from the pulpit, we are told there is a convenient path, and a less traveled road of integrity. ... We face such forks a million times a day, even in the space of a breath. Life is permeated with possibility at every instant. What distinguishes one life from another is intention, the one thing that we can control. Rosa Parks's intentions were deep and unswerving, as were King's, Thoreau's, and Gandhi's.... While the events of the world were out of their control, their resolve was not.

... remember Emerson's moral botany: corn seeds produce corn; justice creates justice; and kindness fosters generosity. ... Individuals start where they stand and, in Antonio Machado's poetic dictum, make the road by walking. For [Thoreau] there were no inconsequential acts, only consequential inaction....

War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning: Jack Roderick

In War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges looks at the soldier's actual reality of killing another:

"To say the least, killing is nearly always a sordid affair. Those who carry such memories do so with difficulty, even when the cause seems just. Moreover, those who are killed do not die the clean death we see on television or film. They die messy, disturbing deaths that often plague the killers. ... I have looked into the open eyes of dead men and wished them shut.... Even hardened soldiers drape cloth over such faces or reach out and push the eyelids shut. ...

Nothing is more sickening in war than watching human lives get snuffed out. Nothing haunts you more. And it is never, as outsiders think, clean or easy or neat. Killing is a dirty business...."