Editor's Page
The Imposter Magi by Frank Thomas Smith
A
boy from the village ran into
our yard at lunchtime on the fifth of January and announced at the top of his
lungs that the Three Kings were coming to the
schoolhouse that night at nine o’clock. That’s how news in Las
Chacras is announced – by word of mouth. I remembered that a neighbor had asked
for a donation to buy sweets and balloons a few days before. Making enquiries
on the main road, I found out that the Kings were scheduled to begin their
descent to the school from the almacén
at nine o’clock, which meant that they would more likely begin at nine-thirty
and arrive at ten...Read more
Los Reyes Impostores por Frank Thomas Smith
El mediodía
del 5 de enero un chico del pueblo entró corriendo a nuestro
patio y anunció a voz en cuello que los tres Reyes Magos
llegaban a la escuela esa noche a las nueve. Así es como se
transmiten las noticias en Las Charcas –de boca en boca.
Recordé entonces que, unos días antes, un vecino me
había pedido una contribución para comprar golosinas y
globos. Preguntando en el camino principal, averigüé que
a las nueve los Reyes tenían programado iniciar su descenso
desde el almacén hacia la escuela, lo que significaba que más
probablemente comenzarían a las nueve y media y llegarían
a las diez...Read more
Features
Euro Blind by Simon Critchley
The past
days, weeks and months have seen countless descriptions in the news
media of the crisis in the euro zone and Greece’s role as its
leading actor as a tragedy. But is it? Well, yes, but not in the
sense in which it is usually discussed, and the difference is
important and revealing. In the
usual media parlance, a tragedy is simply a misfortune that befalls
a person (an accident, a fatal disease) or a polity (a natural
disaster) and that is outside their control. While this is an
arguably accurate definition of the word — something like it
appears in many dictionaries — there is a deeper and more
interesting understanding of the term to be found in many of the 31
extant Greek tragedies... Read more
Civil Society at Ground Zero by Rebecca Solnit
You
Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring. Last
Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters
overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up
again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall
Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one
of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy
Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of
danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you
mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your
children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to
Manhattan... Read more
The War Against the Poor by Frances Fox Piven
We’ve
been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq,
but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war
against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not
surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures
from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the
nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war
against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now. The Occupy Wall
Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the
top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now,
it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of
poverty in this country...Read more
When you want to help, the
Loaves Multiply by Rosana Guerra
For the past 16 years Adelina
“Adela” Milla prepares an afternoon
snack and supper in
the El Quebracho neighborhood of the city of Córdoba for 130
children who live in extreme poverty. She had hardly moved to the
neighborhood in 1987 when the kids knocked on her door asking for a
piece of bread or some milk. With no hesitation she spoke with her
husband about opening a canteen. “I told him that
I'd like to have one in our house. He said it would be a lot of work,
and I answered:
I want to do it."
...Read more
Cuando uno quiere ayudar, los panes se multiplican por Rosana Guerra
Hace 16 años que Adelina “Adela” Milla, más
conocida en barrio El Quebracho –ubicado en el sur de la ciudad
de Córdoba– como Adela, prepara la merienda y la cena
para 130 niños que viven en situación de extrema
pobreza. Apenas
se mudó con su familia a este barrio en 1987, los chicos le
tocaban la puerta para pedirle un pedacito de pan o un poco de leche.
Sin dudarlo habló con su esposo y le planteó la idea de
abrir un comedor. “Le dije que me gustaría tener uno en
casa. El me dijo que era mucho trabajo. Y yo le respondí: lo
quiero hacer”, relata...
Read more
Fiction
For Esmé with Love and Squalor by J. D. Salinger
Just
recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that
will take place in England on April 18th. It happens to be a wedding
I'd give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation first
arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make the trip
abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged. However, I've since discussed
the matter rather extensively with my wife, a breathtakingly
levelheaded girl, and we've decided against it--for one thing, I'd
completely forgotten that my mother-in-law is looking forward to
spending the last two weeks in April with us. I really don't get to
see Mother Grencher terribly often, and she's not getting any
younger. She's fifty-eight. (As she'd be the first to admit.)
Read more
The Gospel According to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges
These events took place
on the Los Álamos cattle ranch, towards the south of the
township of Junín, during the final days of March, 1928. The
protagonist was a medical student, Baltasar Espinosa. We may describe
him for now as no different to any of the many young men of Buenos
Aires, with no particular traits worthy of note other than an almost
unlimited kindness and an oratorical faculty that had earned him
several prizes from the English school in Ramos Mejía. He did
not like to argue; he preferred it when his interlocutor was right
and not he himself. Although the vagaries of chance in any game
fascinated him, he played them poorly because it did not please him
to win. His wide intelligence was undirected; at thirty-three years
of age, the completion of one last subject stood in the way of his
graduation, despite its being his favourite... Read more
El Evangelio según Marcos por Jorge Luis Borges
El hecho sucedió
en la estancia Los Álamos, en el partido de Junín,
hacia el sur, en los últimos días del mes de marzo de
1928. Su protagonista fue un estudiante de medicina, Baltasar
Espinosa. Podemos definirlo por ahora como uno de tantos muchachos
porteños, sin otros rasgos dignos de nota que esa facultad
oratoria que le había hecho merecer más de un premio en
el colegio inglés de Ramos Mejía y que una casi
ilimitada bondad. No le gustaba discutir; prefería que el
interlocutor tuviera razón y no él. Aunque los azares
del juego le interesaban, era un mal jugador, porque le desagradaba
ganar. Su abierta inteligencia era perezosa; a los treinta y tres
años le faltaba rendir una materia para graduarse, la que más
lo atraía. Leer más
Anthroposophy
Esoteric
Lessons for the First Class of the School for Spiritual Science at
the Goetheanum -
Lesson Two by Rudolf Steiner
Introduction:
During the
re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf
Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which
had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the
outset of the First World War made it's continuance impossible. However,
the original school was only for a relatively few selected
individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School
for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in
Dornach, Switzerland. ...Read more
Karmic Relations, Volume II, Lecture 1 by Rudolf Steiner
We will now continue our
study of karma. I have pointed out to you how the impulses in the
souls of human beings work on and are transplanted, as it were,
from one earthly life into another, so that the fruits of an
earlier epoch are carried over to a later one by people
themselves. An idea such as this
must not be received merely as a theory; it should take hold of
our very hearts and souls. We should feel that we who are now
here have been many times in earthly existence, and that in every
life we assimilated the culture and civilisation then around us;
we took it into our souls and carried it over into the next
incarnation, after working upon it spiritually between death and
a new birth. Only when we look back in this way do we really feel
ourselves standing within the community of mankind...
Read more
Poetry
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
...Read more
Last Letter (to Sylvia Plath) by Ted Hughes
What
happened that night, your final night?
Double, treble exposure
over everything.
Late afternoon Friday, my last sight of you
alive,
Burning your letter to me in the ashtray with that strange
smile.
What did you say over the smoking shards of that letter?
So
carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you and
leave you to blow its ashes off your plan...
Read more
Letters to the Editor
Dear
Frank Thomas Smith,
I
will read with interest your English translations of the Esoteric Lessons in
comparison with the English language edition published in 1994 by the
Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain. Those volumes are publicly
available, but of limited supply and of great expense; not as much "in
public availability" as on the web. Perhaps you are translating from the German online edition posted by a site in Russia? I do appreciate that you translate School “for” Spiritual Science, rather than
School “of”...Read more
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You can find us under the
Southern Cross constellation in the Traslasierra Valley, Province of
Córdoba, Argentina. Visitors always welcome. Just follow the sign that
reads: La Cruz del Sur.
Frank Thomas Smith, Editor
JoAnn Schwarz, Associate Editor
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