Peace on Earth

In large part this is a personal account of how MacArthur Park has been a continual background setting for my life in Los Angeles. When I viewed the July 7, 2025 video of MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, being swept by officers from ICE to enforce federal immigration law—all I could think of was the 1968…

On Monday July 17, 2006, Agence France Presse reported: “US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from ‘malicious terrorist acts.’” A poem written in 1982 by Israeli playwright and poet, Chanoch Levin. ______________________________________________________ Beirut is in flames. Beirut is burning And this…

At London’s Sotheby’s auction house on Oct. 12, 2007, just as Execution, a painting by contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun was about to go on the auction block, a man seated in the auction hall leapt to his feet and began shouting; “Shame on all of you! You’re spending millions of pounds on art and the world is falling apart!…