First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.

'Mixtape' is a very appropriate word to include in the title of Goran Hugo Olsson's film because it includes a rich mixture of cultural voices. They speak across different dividing lines such as those of haves and have-nots, youth and maturity, black and white, national and global, and the past and the present.

War poisons the land Like diseased minds downloaded/ into bowls of tears.

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American.

An author accepting language's invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively--even if with much dread--in ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.

When we vote we participate in the construction of a context.

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.