Paris | ZETEO

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, from CNN video clip, 29 September 2017

Puerto Rico, Mayor Cruz, Shakespeare

September 30, 2017 by William Eaton

Speeches of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, in the Company of Consonant Words from Patrick Henry, Karuna Ezara Parikh’, Martin Luther King, Jr., Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shakespeare 29 September 2017, as revised 4 October 2017 San Juan Mayor Cruz’s speeches to cable-news reporters and the world were heroic and heart-rending, and examples of great leadership in a time of crisis. If and when documentaries come to be made of the Trump years, sadly, these clips […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: CNN, death, disaster, Donald Trump, hunger, Martin Luther King, Paris, Patrick Henry, Puerto Rico, Shakespeare, Shelley, speeches

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eiffel tower flashing at night, blue with white lights

Dylan, Nobel, Paris, Chimes Flashing

October 19, 2016 by William Eaton

Le monde s’étire s’allonge et se retire comme un accordéon qu’une main sadique tourmente The earth stretches elongated and snaps back like an accordion tortured by a sadic hand Dans les déchirures du ciel, les locomotives en furie In the rips in the sky insane locomotives S’enfuient Take flight Et dans les trous, In the gaps Les roues vertigineuses les bouches les voix Whirling wheels mouths voices Et les chiens du malheur qui aboient à nos trousses And the dogs […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Blaise Cendrars, Bob Dylan, Clintons, French, John Donne, Paris, poetics, poetry, popular music, songs, translation

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Who is Paris?

November 16, 2015 by fritztucker

As my colleagues at Zeteo, William and Steve, have already pointed out, the sorrow we feel for those who lost their lives or loved ones during the attacks in Paris and Beirut this week is unfortunately accompanied by fear that the violence will only escalate from here. That is, after all, the point of terrorism, to take the middle ground out from under people’s feet and make them choose sides. If we refuse to choose sides, however, we combat terrorism better than any aircraft […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, Uncategorized, ZiLL • Tags: death, French, History, immigration, ISIS, Paris, politics, terrorism, travel

Paris Terrorism Madrid Syria Despair

November 14, 2015 by William Eaton

All I can manage this morning is an expression of disgust and despair. Yesterday morning, half a day or so before news of Paris began to reverberate around the world, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed piece by Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. The piece was about the opening of multilateral talks on Syria, scheduled to begin in Vienna today. Roth’s article expressed concern that the negotiators will set aside the on-going catastrophe affecting Syria’s civilian […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: civil war, France, Madrid, Paris, Syria, terrorism

Paris, Our Ideals, Terrorism

November 14, 2015 by William Eaton

Paris: Nothing Like It, Nothing Better In recent days, I’ve spent time formatting a book titled Paris, Etc., edited by Jessie Vail Aufiery. Jessie lived in Paris for a number of years with her French husband and their twin daughters. My immersion in poems, stories, and essays steeped in Parisian details, venues, attitudes, and nuances gave me a personal grim irony when confronted by the carnage of November 13, 2015. I’m sure many others are experiencing their own shock […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: France, Paris, terrorism, Western civilization

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Paris, Terrorism, Religion, Justice

November 14, 2015 by William Eaton

The recent documentary about the Black Panthers called attention, among other things, to that group’s ten-point platform, which included such demands as “We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings” and “We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.” The Panthers were not a terrorist group; they engaged in demonstrations and political theater that at times included unconcealed weapons. They wanted revolution, but—like many Sixties leftwing groups in the US, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, class warfare, justice, Paris, religion, terrorism, Third World War, working class

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On Savoring

December 1, 2014 by William Eaton

Some features of an ethics of tasting, good and bad By William Eaton [I]t is muttered that whenever any government wants to dupe the peasants, it promises the abolition of the wine tax, and as soon as it has duped the peasants, it retains or reintroduces the wine tax. In the wine tax the peasant tastes the bouquet of the government . . . [Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850] It tastes twice the price. — […]

Categories: Essay • Tags: Camus, food, France, Paris, restaurants

statue of liberty covering face with hands - cropped

DON’T HATE ME HATE MY

November 13, 2014 by William Eaton

This past summer an art exhibit or spectacle at Paris’s official hip museum, le Palais de Tokyo, offered, among many other things, incomplete slogans, handwritten with black markers on cardboard. Among the dozens of these, most of which are in French, I noted and translated these: NOUS SOMMES LES OUBLÉS DE I.E.: WE ARE THE FORGOTTEN OF PAS DE DÉMOCRATIE SANS NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT JE NE VEUX PAS D’AVENIR JE VEUX UN I DON’T WANT A FUTURE I WANT A LE PARTAGE SAUVERA […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: art, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, politics, Thomas Hirschorn

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