Writing
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Cut Down Your Mast To The Boards And Heave It Into The Sea
There was a time a few weeks ago here in New York City that the two most prevalent sounds were ambulance sirens and bird song. And here we are in a city that is light...
Revealing The Secrets of Tobacco Sap
For many Native American people tobacco is a highly sacred plant that is stitched into many creation myths and so in some ways ritual use of tobacco is mandatory for simply just being in the...
On The Phony. On The Paper Moon
Again this week I struggled to find a clear wind to write about and reflect on and share with you. The news of the day feels like a holding pattern despite all the movement. I...
Stories Rarely Travel In Straight Lines: Stumbling Towards the White Bear
Reflecting on the goings on in the world this week trying to find something to send off to you in this weekly newsletter I found myself with only half-baked wonderings. I noted the rising COVID...
Faithful To The Times, Still: Restorative Justice
A number of year ago I had the great fortune that a film that I conceived of, wrote the treatment for, and ended up co-producing got made and had two theatrical releases. The film had...
Thuggee: Complexity, Cudgel, and a Colonization
Vasco de Gama the famed Portuguese explorer and leading edge for European imperialism in Africa and India and Asia landed in India in 1498. Once this trip was finally deemed possible and actually profitable this...
A Gift For You That You Didn’t Know Was Coming
We have all heard the phrase ‘Mother Earth’ and it serves as kind of mythic but generic Ur-Mother who gives us everything, such is her generosity. And we should be kind to her and not...
Tending To A Fundamental Ache Of Our Time
If you have been reading this newsletter for a while you will have noticed that the voices I elevate and the stories I tell here here at Primal Derma are ones of people (human and...
Mercy May Rejoice Upon The Recession of Justice
A bit more than a decade ago a feature length film that I had made came out in theaters after a few years in production. It was a feature length documentary that I had conceived...
Of or Concerning The Cow
Though the idea had been around for a long time and versions of the practice were in place as inoculation, in 1796 Edward Jenner figured out the mechanism and a practice for what we now...
