Susana H. Case‘s new book 4 Rms w Vu is out from Mayapple Press, another in Case’s line of sharply observed poetry collections that serve up her at times scathing insights with a playful sense of humor. An excellent recipe for a pleasurable read.

Stefanie Rocknak beat 265 other artists with her amazing, life size bronze for the Edgar Allan Poe Square Public Art Project.

Paul Ruseabagina (portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda by Don Cheadle) asserts in a Boston Globe Op Ed that Rwandans can’t remain silent on human rights abuses. Ruseabagina continues his work in exile, through the Hotel Rwanda Foundation. Lawyer Jean-Marie Kamatali, who returned to help rebuild the country’s legal system, recounts in a NY Time Op Ed, Following Orders in Rwanda, a perpetrator’s excuse for genocidal murders: “The authorities ordered us to kill Tutsis.”

Ruseabagina’s reminder that history repeats itself is brought home in an eery way by Kamatali’s client who unwittingly echoes Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil.

There are so many questions of forgiveness and rebuilding raised in the long aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Take for example former President Bill Clinton’s assertions that his foundation work is intended in no small part as amends for his failure to intervene in 1994 Rwanda.

It’s not precisely that I am obsessed with this topic. But in the moment of a 20 year anniversary, it seems difficult to evade, and perhaps that is a good thing.

“Any time you pick up a well shuffled deck of cards you are almost certainly holding an arrangement of cards that has never before existed in history.” A brief and enchanting lesson on factorials from Yannay Khaikin, courtesy of TED-Ed.

Cities like NYC and San Francisco are rapidly morphing into places only the wealthy can afford, and the cycle of gentrification usually begins with the very artists whose vibrancy helped create these cities. In his Art F City article Redefining the Role of the Artist William Powhida documents how Brooklyn’s Deputy Borough President Diana Reyna, the first Dominican-American woman elected to public office in New York State, opens a dialog on “the racial tensions caused by artists’ role: artists outprice low-income families before they, themselves, are displaced by yuppies, chain stores, and anyone else who can afford higher rents.”

Tip of the hat, once again, to Hrag Vartanian’s Hyperallergic Weekend Required Reading.

Featured image by Fanny Schertzer, from the Kigali Memorial Center, Gisozi, Rwanda.