Opinion
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Dishwasher Dialogues, The Beginning
Le Patron de Chez Haynes
By: - Aug 27th, 2025Leroy employed young people as dishwashers, waitresses, and bartenders who were also writers, poets, photographers, painters, and dancers. He was generous and warm-hearted, one of those rare people who somehow hadn’t managed to forget what it meant to be young. In Paris those were years without credit cards; copy machines were rare; even telephones were hard to come by. Chez Haynes was a safe haven. And our dreams of Paris would surely come true.
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Dishwasher Dialogues Back to the Beginning
A Fresh Start
By: - Aug 24th, 2025We started posting Dishwasher Dialogues about two thirds on. That ended last week. By popular demand we are now backtracking to the very beginning. This weekly column from Paris is one of our most read features. Everyone loves Paris.
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The Unseen Hand
Laozi’s Wisdom in an Age of Spectacle
By: - Aug 19th, 2025In the 17th chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Laozi outlines a hierarchy of leadership: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him.” This timeless wisdom offers a stark and challenging contrast to the political reality of modern America, where leadership has become a spectacle of personality, and one figure, in particular, seems to occupy every moment of the national consciousness.
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Dishwasher Dialogues: Last Call
If You Live Long Enough Life Ends
By: - Aug 17th, 2025I am not sure what old is anymore. Somewhere along the line it feels like we picked up an extra decade on our ancestors; those of us who have been lucky enough to keep our health. ‘Ninety is the new eighty’ sort of thing.
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Berkshire Author Steven Reed Nelson Publishes a Provocative Book
Fire in the Wire: Electricity Empowers Human Evolution Beyond Homo Sapiens
By: - Aug 15th, 2025Western Massachusetts author and entrepreneur, Steven Reed Nelson, is a free range thinker. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and layman in the field of science, he proposes that the term Homo sapiens be replaced by Homo electric. The introduction of electricity some 200 years ago has greatly impacted human evolution.
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Kennedy Center Honorees
A Matter of Taste or Lack Thereof
By: - Aug 13th, 2025Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, George Strait, and English actor Michael Crawford will receive the Kennedy Center Honors at a Donald Trump-hosted ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8. He has hinted that the Kennedy Center should be renamed for him or at least to have co-billing.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Museums
The ladies of Wichita
By: - Aug 10th, 2025Then on a Sunday afternoon, you’ll be queuing for the Louvre, and you’ll start chatting with a lady from Wichita, Kansas, and she’ll ask you all sorts of questions. How do you know so much about Paris? Are you a professor or something like that? And I’ll say no I’m a bartender and a painter.
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The Power of Non-Forcing:
Finding Wu Wei in a World That Pushes Back
By: - Aug 05th, 2025In a world that champions the hustle, the grind, and the relentless pursuit of goals, the ancient Daoist concept of Wu Wei can seem paradoxical, if not entirely counterintuitive. Often translated as “non-action” or “non-doing,” it’s easily mistaken for passivity or indolence.
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Dishwasher Dialogues: Switzerland
Christmas in Paris
By: - Aug 03rd, 2025Ever since my boarding school days in Vienna and going on school skiing trips, mountains mean snow and snow means cold. I was cold those four years in Vienna. To this day give me the Mediterranean heat.
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Diswasher Dialogues, Day of the Dead
El Dia de Los Muertos
By: - Jul 27th, 2025This feast of celebrating the dead––and death, of course too––was a good jab into my coddled heart, and a solid fuck-you-and-the-nag-you’re-riding aimed at the grim reaper. After the clients finally left way past closing time, the entire staff, all rather worse for fatigue and drink, sat down for our own special Halloween dinner.
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The Quiet Feast
Finding the Dao in Solitude
By: - Jul 22nd, 2025Laozi reminds us in the Tao Te Ching of the utility of emptiness: “We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.” A life cluttered with noise and perpetual engagement leaves no room for the spirit to reside
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Rags
But Not Riches
By: - Jul 21st, 2025For an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of a play by Greg the set of painted rags was conceived by Rafael. It was cheap and easy to transport. Looking out over a mountain of rags, however, the audience consisted of a single individual. They attributed lack of success to their unflinching artistic integrity.
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The Dao of Push Hands
Cultivating Suppleness and Wisdom
By: - Jul 15th, 2025At its core, push hands is a two-person training drill designed to develop sensitivity, balance, and the ability to neutralize and issue force. Partners maintain continuous contact, typically at the wrists or forearms, and engage in a gentle yet focused exchange.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Les Droits de l'homme
Patriotism and Passports
By: - Jul 13th, 2025I always felt the simple visitor’s stamp on my passport gave me just enough right to live in Paris until the next visitor’s stamp. I never contemplated the idea of citizenship or even having a carte de travail.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues: Philosophy
Derrida, Wittgenstein and Love in Paris
By: - Jul 07th, 2025Stephen loved philosophy. I remember he and I arguing over Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations during the rehearsals for One Day in May. Well, it wasn’t so much an argument as me shouting ‘Wittgenstein, what do you know about Wittgenstein?’
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Americans in Paris 1970s
Dishwasher Dialogues
By: - Jun 29th, 2025Chez Haynes had a counterpoint, of sorts, in the American Center in Paris. Not only by virtue of it hosting jazz concerts in its heyday a decade earlier, but also because of its focus on experimental theatre, dance, and poetry and its welcoming of young writers and performers. The Center was down on my side of Paris, 261 Boulevard Raspail, not far from the Tour Montparnasse; back then a brand-new monolithic beast (which ended up saving Paris from further skyscraper assault).
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An Uncarved Block
Awareness of Being
By: - Jun 24th, 2025The pure awareness of being. You leave yourself behind, and become part of the whole of creation; leaving your ego behind, you simply are. Nothing to strive for, nothing to become, there is only presence. You simply are. No longer trapped in your mind, you can observe your thoughts, emotions and reactions without being swept away by them. You are not your thoughts, you are the observer of them.
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Sleeping with Rothko
From The Dishwasher Dialogues
By: - Jun 22nd, 2025The basics for writing are cheaper. I could hold them all and my five-box life in my arms at the same time. But then it would all simply be an exercise in self-entertainment or personal therapy. Somewhere along the line writing requires others. Readers for a start. Even if they are imagined. Then publishers would be a nice touch. Again, even if that is self-publishing.
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No King's Day USA
June 14, North Adams, MA
By: - Jun 18th, 202515 organizations and concerned citizens in the Berkshires hosted: Relay for Democracy; No Kings North Adams, Great Barrington, West Stockbridge and Pittsfield; and Projecting Democracy, from 8 in the morning until 11 pm at night. A very busy and important day!
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Paris The Dishwasher Dialogues
Sleeping with Rothko
By: - Jun 15th, 2025I recall you always taking photos of yourself in these photo booths, often with staff and friends from the restaurant. Or with whoever happened to be with you at the time. Whenever we were on the metro together, changing metro lines or exiting, you would see a booth and suddenly track straight toward it. A compulsion. In hindsight, it was a bit strange, given we had access to your darkroom.
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The Sage in the Green Mountains
Lessons from a Barefoot Doctor and a Seeker’s Journey
By: - Jun 06th, 2025I first encountered “Fourth Uncle on the Mountain” during a deeply formative period of my life – while living as a Daoist monk at a small temple nestled on a mountaintop in Hubei Province, China. My temple sister, Cheng Feng, and I loved this book and spent much time discussing it. She is Vietnamese and French, and felt a strong connection to Dr. Van Nguyen’s story.
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From The Dishwasher Dialogues
Leroy Haynes, Charles Bukowski and Simone De Beauvoir
By: - Jun 01st, 2025Leroy’s silent advice was always there, don’t get too comfy, son, life’s tough and it’s not going to get easier. Unlike Manhattan where I had previously lived, Paris, was not menacing. Never did I sense that there were places or quartiers where I shouldn’t venture.
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Harmony and Disharmony
Understanding Evil in Daoism
By: - May 27th, 2025Rather than focusing on inherent “evil,” Daoism often addresses what we might perceive as evil in terms of disharmony, imbalance, or deviation from the natural Way (Dao). Actions or situations perceived as evil often arise when individuals or systems operate out of alignment with the natural flow, driven by excessive desire, forced action, or unnatural striving (Wei).
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Berkshire Arts and Culture Alliance
Advocates for Economic, Tourism, and Infrastructure Needs
By: - May 27th, 2025The leaders of ten arts and culture institutions from across Berkshire County have convened the Berkshire Arts and Culture Alliance (BACA) to advocate for the economic, tourism, and infrastructure needs of arts and culture organizations in the county.
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The Dishwasher Dialogues, Paris, Two
Undocumented Getting a Real Job
By: - May 26th, 2025In the 1970s the artists Gregory Light and Rafael Mahdavi were undocumented living under the radar in Paris. They were paid in cash with tips by a friendly bistro. It was just enough to scrape by. This chapter of Dishwasher Dialogues recounts efforts to get “real jobs," secure mail boxes and bank accounts.
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