Democracy Now!
by Frida Berrigan. My son has fat little hands — the kind where the knuckles sink in instead of stick out. Seamus Philip is coming up on seven months old and is learning to use his hands to grab and pull and caress and play. He’s not going to be operating machinery or doing intricate
by Frida Berrigan. I saw GI Jane in a San Francisco theater the week it opened in 1997. The place was packed. When Demi Moore shaved her head, the place erupted in a chaos of cheers and I was not sitting on my hands. Later on in the film, when Viggo Mortensen’s character beats her
by Frida Berrigan. Every once in a while, I come across a book that is so good I wish I had the idea first. Rosalie Riegle’s Doing Time For Peace: Resistance, Family and Community — an edited volume of interviews with peace activists who have spent time in jails and prisons as members of families
by Frida Berrigan. Alabama’s football team watched Zero Dark Thirty to get themselves psyched up for the big game against Notre Dame on Sunday night. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden must have been inspiring stuff, because the Crimson Tide went on to overwhelm the Fighting Irish 42
by Frida Berrigan. In 1995, I was on a bus in Guatemala. It was crowded. Not rush-hour-A-train-in-NYC crowded. No, this was inhaling-the-air-the-person-next-to-you-just-exhaled crowded. Whole-families-to-a-seat crowded. Crushed together so close, you could count the ribs of the person in front of you. School-bus-meant-for-50-children-carrying-200-people crowded. The family in the next seat up had a little girl. She
by Frida Berrigan. Hard to believe it was seven years ago this week that 20 or so friends and I were fasting and vigiling outside of the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay. It was a dusty and inauspicious place. A very spiffy and proper Cuban military checkpoint full of friendly but taciturn military personnel
by Frida Berrigan. A single candle gleams in a quiet church. For Catholics and many other Christians, Advent began last week with the lighting of a candle. Advent is the time of expectation, of longing, of hope — preparing for the Christ child so long promised, prophesied and proclaimed. Four candles, one more lit each
by Frida Berrigan. Thanksgiving was yesterday. I ate turkey and picked at some tofurkey and lots of mashed potatoes and stuffing. My father-in-law can rock a pecan pie and I made myself silly over it. It seems almost trite, historically amnesiatic and definitely retro to focus on the “thanks” in Thanksgiving, given that the holiday
by Frida Berrigan. Thanksgiving was yesterday. I ate turkey and picked at some tofurkey and lots of mashed potatoes and stuffing. My father-in-law can rock a pecan pie and I made myself silly over it. It seems almost trite, historically amnesiatic and definitely retro to focus on the “thanks” in Thanksgiving, given that the holiday 
by Frida Berrigan. “The end is nigh.” It is hard to believe when the sun is shining over green Connecticut grass and Seamus is a slobbering and happy almost 20 pound behemoth in a little bouncy chair just a week before his four month birthday. But there it is: natural and unnatural disaster, high crimes
