I drove past my local polling place this morning. The parking lot was full. Campaign signs crowded the lawn on both sides of the drive way. Now, at Starbucks customers come in with the conventional hint of a smile on their faces. If they are like me they carry a suppressed sense of foreboding…
Today is the day before the ballots are cast, the vote tallied and the results announced. My cynical self says, “so what.” The one candidate is a life long uber predator, property developer, and pitch man for all manner of dodgy, shell game offers: Trump University, Trump Steaks, apparel, etc. The other candidate offers…
It is perfectly clear that political parties across the spectrum today are unquestioningly committed to maintain the capitalist growth economy, seemingly oblivious to the catastrophe that this out-dated development agenda holds in store for people and the planet – a catastrophe that, in some respects, has already arrived. In short, a universal ‘growth fetish’…
Last night I attended a production of The Addams Family musical play at the Vernon Hills High School auditorium. The play was a clever, contemporary rendition of the old Addams family ABC sitcom which I barely remember seeing in the 1960s. The concept of a dysfunctional typical American family was created by cartoonist Charles…
Today is Friday, do I dare call it “Good Friday?” The election is scheduled for Tuesday. From the vitriol, the accusations that have filled electronic media, and particularly the breathless panic with which the network anchorman “reports” the latest outrageous incrimination,—this feels a lot like a gathering mob to me. I just don’t know…
One Tin Soldier is a 1960’s era protest song written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. It was first recorded by the Canadian group The Original Castle in 1969. It was recorded in 1971 by The American group Coven and it reached number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was featured in the…
WHAT HAS TO BE DONE WHEN NOTHING CAN BE DONE. Dystopia has to be faced and dissolved by irony. If paranoia “knows well”— we need a method of ignorance. The spectrum of the possible is much larger than the range of probability. Irony is the excess of language that opens the door to the…
A visit to Cave Hill cemetery forces a dislocation in time. My sense of being “in the flow” stutters, stops. The watch on my wrist “keeps time” and my cell time display functions. But in the presence of the dead, and with statues of angels standing watch —life itself strikes me as palpably temporary. …
If I could send a message to everyone who does not blindly follow Donald Trump and the Republican Party…………………this would be it. Take courage my friends. Keep working it. That is, — the one special life that you have been given.
We Americans entertain the notion that we are unlike other peoples. It’s a seductive thought. The American system of governance is emulated, our society is knit together by fascination with sporting events, our economy is a Capitalistic paradise, etc. One could go on and on about American Exceptionalism. The myth has worn very…
