A Fire in the Mind: Threnody for Artists Lost Before Their Time
I wrote this song several years ago about a poet/astronomer who died before her time. I thought it might serve as a threnody for the many artists we’re losing to the pandemic.
The New Gathering
Thinking about the painful absence of physical proximity forced upon us in a time of pestilence, and looking forward to the new gathering when it’s finally over. A very rough cut of a song just written. I’m thinking, my friend, of the meeting That we will enjoy one fine day We’ll throw our arms around […]
The Invisible Man: Joe Biden’s Deadly Abdication
Joe Biden’s disappearance from public view during an extreme national crisis is one of the most astounding, jaw-dropping abdications of responsibility I have ever seen in a public official — especially one who might well be the next president. The excuse his aides offer about “struggling to set up the technology” so he can communicate […]
Blowing in the Whirlwind: As Ye Sow, Joe Shall Ye Reap
Joe Biden’s manifold and manifest vulnerabilities in a contest with the obviously addled but still media-savvy Donald Trump are often offered by supporters of Bernie Sanders as a reason to back their man as the more likely winner. “Biden will lose,” they say; “if you really want to defeat Trump, then Sanders is the only […]
Chill Factor: Wikileaks Trial is a Trump Travesty Aimed at Killing Truth
It doesn’t matter what you think of Julian Assange personally; his personality is not on trial. He is facing charges for one thing only: publishing incontrovertible evidence of US war crimes in Iraq. If he is extradited to the US and convicted, then every single media outlet that publishes evidence of government wrongdoing will face […]
Shades of 68: How Far Will Our Elites Go to Stop Sanders?
Because I have teenage children who sometimes look to me to give them a sense of hope for the future, I try to be as optimistic as I can whenever we talk of US politics and the possibility of positive change in the nation’s dire situation. The success so far of Bernie Sanders’ campaign is one […]
Thanks, Founding Dads! How Trump Could Lose Popular & Electoral Vote and Still Win
Due to the American political system’s in-built, fundamental, anti-democratic nature, it is entirely possibly that Donald Trump could be re-elected in 2020 even if he loses the popular vote by millions of votes AND also loses the Electoral College (the 18th-century system-rigging gimmick that gave the vote-loser his “victory” last time). And it would all […]
The Human Losers or the Husks in Power: Which Side Are You On?
Dying behind bars: 33-year-old inmate’s stage 4 cancer going untreated in Alabama prison My best friend from high school was in and out of the prison system the last two decades of his life. He was a drug addict. This was before the opioid epidemic; his poison was crack cocaine. His father had been a […]
Some initial notes on “The Long Dark”
Scratched down in a notebook in a cafe during a lunch hour, in a grim week of bad news. More to come, perhaps: We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, […]
Potomac Kabuki: Dems Deliberately Ignore Corruption for Doomed Impeachment Ploy
Today the US Senate acquitted Donald Trump on impeachment charges that should have never been brought. Faced with a mountain of open corruption, the Democrats chose to bring the weakest charge imaginable, one that involved subjective interpretations of conversations (some second-hand), the temporary withholding of weapons that Barack Obama refused to give to Ukraine – […]