Last Quarter

  • Happiness is a warm gun

    We have an American myth that the independent dude with gun on his hip can rid the world of bad guys. Now it’s in our cultural DNA. It’s the thematic root of thousands of TV shows, movies, and video games. We export it to great profit. We base our military stance on it. It’s a…

  • Martin Luther King Day

    A little perspective for today, Martin Luther King Day, Jan 15, 2018. I want to invent a fictional scenario that might open the eyes of some European-American people to the feelings that people of African origin are expressing on this day.   Preface: Some fifty years ago I was working one summer as a community…

  • Hurry Up!

    Hurry Up!

    I have a phobia for clocks and calendars. Harold Lloyd in that old silent movie hanging off a giant clock dial. Calendar pages flipping like leaves in the wind each bearing away another day. Schoolmarmish spirits holding yardsticks and tapping a foot clad in a heavy brown brogan. Tick tick. Bosses looking at their watches…

  • Walls vs Meals

    Today a madman; I don’t want to remember his name; killed 50 people in a club in Florida. The club catered to homosexual people. Were any of them personally offending this man? Did their deaths relieve him of some life burden? I often think it is so characteristically human to try to glue handles on…

  • The Little Death

    I’m listening to Joan Baez sing Diamonds and Rust. “We both know what memories can bring ….” Perfectly nostalgic. I’m remembering my own “girl on the half-shell”. I have made it a policy not to regret, because, if you are paying attention, there are too many forks in the road to think one way “right.” But…

  • Evolution

    The Empathetic Gene a salute to Elizabeth Gilbert and her novel —               The Signature of All Things Ms. Gilbert, after reading your wonderful novel “The Signature Of All Things” I am buoyed up in my belief in things liberal and progressive. You tell a tale of a woman investigating the forces of life, including…

  • The value of silence

    .     Being silent is not the same as being quiet. In a Quaker meeting, when all are silent, the noises of the day may fill the room. Kids scream at each other. A bluejay curses. Some huge truck comes to a halt with a moaning of airbrakes akin to the calling of whales. The…