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The day in 2021 when Mills College announced it would shut down

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On March 17, 2025

In Education, memoir

Four years ago, Mills College in Oakland California announced its financial crisis was so severe it would be closing. The news hit hard among students, staff, faculty, and alums. I had worked at the college twice, for a total of 17 years, and I shared a long post on Facebook. Many of my friends among students, staff, and faculty, or those who had left, shared a bit of their experiences. Many of their comments, from those who had been cast aside in earlier years, treated shabbily and tossed out like garbage, were heartbreaking. I am reminded today of these experiences as an entire federal government callously cuts jobs, tosses out long-time workers like garbage. Such treatment seems to be part of the DNA of overlords in our society, egged on by handmaidens who offer their services as consultants.

            Eventually Mills found a way out to keep the campus used for higher education. It got acquired by a larger institution with money, and it is today Mills College at Northeastern University. That was a controversial turn, but that’s another story. Here I wanted to put down, beyond Facebook, on my blog, my post from four years ago, so it will be be available wider and longer (thanks to the internet archive). I have slightly modified to add some more detail.Mills College campus

How do you process the news of the impending death of an institution where you worked for 17 years, where you were also a student for 5 years, all of which shaped you into who you are today? Even if you felt compelled to leave it just over a year ago? Mills College was such a large part of my life.

In 1997 I decided to leave Providence and drive west and relocate to Oakland. Online I had found two jobs to apply for, one at Mills. I didn’t know much about the college other than that a friend had done a graduate education program there. I knew it was a women’s college and searched the website to make sure that men could work there. That’s how much I knew about women’s colleges back then. On my road trip during a stop in Detroit, I learned that Mills was interested in me. At my next stop in Madison, I had a phone interview. Arriving in Wichita next I learned they wanted an in person interview to confirm their tentative choice. Cutting short a road trip through the west, I arrived in the Bay Area, visited Mills, found an apartment near Lake Merritt – one of the most beautiful neighborhoods I have lived in – and started my new job in the newly-created M Center (student administrative services, or the Money Center as students knew it).

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Remembering turbulent days of August 2007 in Dhaka

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On September 29, 2024

In Bangladesh, society

I was living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 2006 into 2009. When I arrived, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was in power, active in rigging the scheduled elections. Facing opposition protests, the military took over, installing a military regime with a civilian face. The change was midwifed by numerous foreign powers. There were a lot of promises of reform but the reality on the ground was proving different.

In August 2007, students rose in protest when army soldiers humiliated and tortured them on campus. We lived under a curfew, governmental and military retaliation. I used to have an irregular blog and I would write a few comments at that time. I penned a longer post but in the atmosphere of state intimidation, I thought it prudent to keep it private. I had thought I had lost the article but recently discovered a copy. Given the changes in Dhaka after the downfall of the fascist regime of Hasina, I thought I would make it public. There are some lessons here that are worthwhile to remember. It was meant to be a rough draft and I’m keeping it that way. (Note: the unnamed man I mention visiting was the late novelist Mahmudul Haque who died the following year.)

Dhaka University students exploded in rebellion for three days. The protests spread across the country. Hawkers and others joined in to take over the streets and clashed with the police.

            Our shorkar is shocked. Where did this come from? Yes, there was a tiny incident on campus. But we met all the students’ demands. The army camp was withdrawn. Sadness was expressed for the original incident. A judicial inquiry has been ordered. The army will take action against its personnel. But the clashes continued. And then came anarchy.

            It must be a conspiracy. Vested quarters. We have information, lots of money came in. Any talk that such things are spontaneous is nonsense.

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The days after the fall of Hasina

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On August 7, 2024

In Bangladesh

I shared this on social media and wanted to post it on my blog. From afar, I’m trying to process news and scenes from Bangladesh after the fall of Hasina’s tyranny.

Every revolution brings to the surface pent-up emotion and energy. I thrill to scenes from Bangladesh where young people speak out and take steps against violence towards the Hindu minority. Where they pick up brooms to sweep away debris, clear the streets, direct traffic.

Even though there wasn’t a well-built popular organization but a mobilization, people step in because they must. The new energy in Bangladesh is exciting. It is fresh and joyous, it is thoughtful. I live far from Bangladesh, but I see it in photos and I see it in social media.

But every revolution also brings to the surface the ugliness that exists in a society. And we have a lot of it. Bigotry against minorities. Criminals seizing opportunity. People out to settle scores. Those who want reprisals. It’s all there. I remember it well from 1971 after liberation.

Like then, there was no one to enforce calm or order. Some freedom fighters set upon collaborators. Some went against the ‘Bihari’ minority. Others took the chance to seize houses or cars from those who had fled. New ‘freedom fighters’ also emerged, chance mohammad’s.

I didn’t see too many loud voices saying no to reprisals. People tried to save victims as best as they could. I’m encouraged by the images of those who’ve come out in front of temples. I am encouraged by the student leaders asking groups to be formed to defend those under threat.

In a situation where the police are discredited but the military has taken temporary power, it is their responsibility to stand against violence. I wish there was a strong enough popular movement to do that, but it’s not there. What there is, seems to be trying its best.

We’re in critical times. Defeated regime supporters are still active, the BNP which once ruled like a mirror of the Hasina regime, is trying to come out in force, saying it was their movement, it’s their time. Some of them and others have other agendas: attacking Hindus, attacking Muslim shrines, attacking statues, spreading the word that Hasina was bad because she was a woman and no woman should ever rule.

My hope is that the liberated energy of the youth who built a broad and inclusive mobilization will be able to counter the ugliness. There will be new elections and my hope is that the old, stained forces will not rise to the top. They’re well organized, the movement is not.

In 2007 when the army set up an interim regime because the BNP-Jamaat had tried to set up a forever situation in its own image, they tried to promote a minus-two formula. But they did it through military shenanigans, through use of the intelligence services, and it failed.

I believe that if we are to achieve something different, realize the hopes of the current revolution, minus-two is the only hope of a new Bangladesh. But this minus-two will have to come from the bottom up. Can the liberated energy we see today pull this off?

The fall of the Hasina regime – an end to a long nightmare

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On August 7, 2024

In Bangladesh

I wrote this for a Facebook post from Philadelphia, Monday morning, August 5, 2024. I’d woken up an hour earlier to the news that Hasina had fled Bangladesh.

My wishful thinking yesterday: If the police/army say we won’t shoot, this could end. Today I’m happy to celebrate the end of a regime that killed more people in a single week than any other in our history — outside of the war. The students of Bangladesh have pulled off a powerful change. Ending a regime that bought up and corrupted everything, that established a nightmare of repression, that believed it had the mandate of 1971 to rule forever. Bangladesh is delta land, the silt is not as stable as would be rulers for life might think.

            I am not surprised that the midwife of change comes from the military. The regime could have cracked, there could have been internal dissenters who called this to an end weeks ago, but Hasina had created such a monolithic regime of yes-men and yes-women no one was left to tell her it was time to go. In East Pakistan/Bangladesh, the midwife of turnover has come from cracks in the ruling establishment: inside the opaque military (1969/1975), breaks in the ruling apparatus (1990), or international diplomacy from big brothers abroad (2007). Popular movements provided the impetus.

            Things were clearly shifting beneath the soil. What comes next though is another thing. The opaque powers — the military, the big brothers abroad who work behind the scenes — will try to resume business as usual. But there is a powerful movement that will not stand aside just because they’re told, let the seniors take over. The seniors in Bangladesh have been a disgrace.

The new interim government will be judged by careful eyes from everyone. Those in the jails must be released. Those killed need to have their families provided for. Those jailed in earlier rounds of repression need to be freed. Those disappeared have to be brought out or accounted for. The media needs freedom and no more telephone calls. Institutionally the role of military intelligence as a power behind the scenes must end.

            Let the people enjoy a freedom they’ve been deprived of for a long time. Time to exhale, time to celebrate, time to consider what the future should bring.

The Night of Bullets, March 25, 1971

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On March 24, 2024

In Bangladesh, fiction, memoir

It is the 25th of March in Dhaka again, 53 years since the Pakistani military crackdown in 1971. For those of us who went through that time, certain events are seared into our memories. Over the years I’ve tried to write some of them down. Other times I’ve tried rendering that time in fiction. Here are a few of those renderings. These memories run through my mind day in and day out when I read, watch, think of what cruelties are being inflicted by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

From the short story Orange Line, included in the book Killing the Water: Stories:

He was one of the last few people on the streets. As he walked with hurried steps towards the subway station, the young man heard the crashing noise of an iron grate being yanked across a storefront. Otherwise the night was still. Even the Salvation Army bell ringers had gone home.

            He was uneasy being alone on the streets. It reminded him of another time, in a place far from where he now lived. Late on that other night, he had left home heading for the riverboat terminal where he hoped to catch the midnight motor launch to the south of the country. But the streets had been deserted in a way that suggested everyone else knew something he did not. Unable to find transportation across town, he started to walk. After a few blocks, he changed his mind and turned back. Minutes after he reached his house, cannons and machine guns shattered the quiet of the night as military troop carriers stormed though the city. Anyone caught in the open had been shot. Three days later during a short break in the curfew, he learned that the passengers waiting at the terminal had been among the military’s first victims.

            He pushed aside those memories. That other night was nothing like this. Tonight the plaza was deserted for very ordinary reasons: a heavy snowstorm had been predicted. It would be the second in a row.

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Remembering Patsy Fox

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On February 27, 2023

In friends, memoir

Twenty-five years ago today, I lost one of my closest friends to cancer. I penned a note five years ago on Facebook; today I share it on my blog. There’s so much more I could say about Patsy—her life, our friendship—but some of the essentials are here. I’ve revised it only a tiny bit.

On February 27, 1998, Patsy Fox left the world. More than a year earlier, after a complex surgery, she’d been diagnosed with a rare cancer. One round of chemo put the cancer into remission, but then it returned and took her in a rush.

I miss her and think about her often.

I first met Patsy Fox in the spring of 1981 in Buffalo, New York. I’d gone there from Detroit to attend a May Day celebration. A few of us spent the night in her apartment. Patsy offered me a beer, and we sat at the kitchen table and began to talk. Turned out we had some things in common. She’d been at Cornell in 1976 when I had visited there for Third World Week, but we didn’t cross paths then. She’d been involved with a radio collective called Rest of the News. We talked for several hours, and there was something that suggested we’d made a connection. The next morning I looked at some of her LP’s: alongside Chopin’s Nocturnes there was Country Joe MacDonald. I was impressed by the number of books and bookshelves in her living room. In my life today I may have recreated some of that but ours are not as well organized as hers.

I saw her a few more times in the coming decade but it was only in the summer of 1993 that we started to become close. This started over email, a means of communication that had just arrived. She had email as a grad student at the University of Buffalo, mine came through my status as a part-time student at Wayne State University in Detroit.

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Stories we read in 2021 in our short story reading club

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On December 20, 2022

In books, fiction

In 2021, we read 82 stories, 8 translations. Stories from India, Mauritius, Australia, China, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, France, UK, US, Central America, Ireland, Japan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Chile, Taiwan, Tasmania, Russia, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada.

Stories we read in 2020 in our short story reading club

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On December 19, 2022

In books, fiction

The reading club was launched in March 2020, as we went into Covid-19 lockdown. This year we read 59 stories, many written originally in English but also translations from many languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Bengali, Malayalam, French, Polish, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese.

Stories we read in 2022 in our short story reading club

By

On December 19, 2022

In books, fiction

In 2022, we read 73 stories, 62 writers, 9 in translation. Writers from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, U.S., U.K, Ukraine, China, Germany, Russia, Ecuador, Ireland, Egypt, Japan, Australia, Kenya. Stories included: reworked folk tales, science/speculative fiction, noir, literary fiction.


Our online short story reading club completes third year

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On December 19, 2022

In books, fiction

When Covid-19 isolated us at home in March 2020, some of us worried about how to continue community. I thrive on connection. On Facebook I read that a friend in Delhi was starting an online book club. The time didn’t work for us here in the Bay Area, so I thought we’d start our own. A post on Facebook showed that a number of people interested, most local but when we got going we’ve had members living in D.C. and Thailand.

Our ambition to discuss books, novellas mainly, didn’t pan out. Too short a time to read a book a week. And we wanted to keep a weekly schedule. We went over to short stories, and sometimes, novel excerpts. We rotate choices among our attendees – there’s a range of taste there – and we’ve read mystery and noir, science/speculative fiction, re-imagined folk and fairy tales, and lots of ‘literary fiction.’ We prefer texts available online and sometimes people share scanned stories. We’re grateful to all the magazines and sites out there that generously publish short fiction.

Our stories have spanned the globe and have included many translations from languages around the world.

Some of us are writers and have many writer friends; we’ve read some stories from our friends and people we’ve known. We’ve kept away from reading stories any of us have penned.

Our members have enjoyed most of the stories, though not every single one. Our discussions have always been energetic and often set off additional explorations into authors, other writing by them, different topics and subjects. It is so enriching to see such a range of writing and the brilliance of so many writers.

In 2022, we’ve read 73 stories, 62 writers, 9 in translation. Writers from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, U.S., U.K, Ukraine, China, Germany, Russia, Ecuador, Ireland, Egypt, Japan, Australia, Kenya.

In 2021, 81 stories, including many translations, including from Chinese, Japanese, Marathi, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Hebrew.

In 2020, we read 58 stories.

In separate posts, I will share lists of all the stories we’ve read each year.