Author Archives: admin

A whimper, not a bang. 235 –Robert M. Shelby, 9-13-14. [335 txt wds]

In view of the legislative charade in this week’s Senate session on amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn Citizens United, I shudder at the travesty of its fanfare and abject failure. This is so deeply distressing I feel physically sickened. 
 (1) Our whole political life plays musical chairs on deck of the SS Leviathan, […]

Life Culture v. Death Culture 234 Robert M. Shelby, 7-30-14. [415 txt wds]

My blog post essay in late November, 2013, was titled, On Changing Ideas. It follows that I should now write on our national illness, a culture of death, a national stagnation caused by fixed ideas, comfortable habits and narrow outlooks. Conservatives and tea-party types should avoid reading this, for they are, and will be, happy […]

Introduction to my Iroquois “Holy Man” poem. 11-18-13, Robert M. Shelby.

This poem, as do many of my poems, reflects study of History and Anthropology. I have always tried to do more than express myself. I wanted to capture something universal, or at least broader and deeper than the self I knew, during most of my life. I wanted to impress myself and signal something of […]

Blog comment on John Gavin’s Benicia Herald article, “The Origin Of The Beginning,” 11-17-13.

John, pal, you wrote: ” I just don’t get how it all started.” Yes. You’re back on Home Base, with all other honest people. We have many conjectures about origins and terminations. I go with Immanuel Kant and the General Semanticists on this: Starting and Ending, time, space, mass, motion, force, discrete “physical” objects, mental […]

What is “The Fall”? #229 –Rev. Robert M. Shelby, hDD, 11-11-13. [860 txt wds]

And how hard is it? If you think of it in terms of the biblical myth of Satan, or the casting down of a literary Lucifer, you are lost in “metaphysics,” which is imaginary narrative of a drama taking place in the Never-Never Land of a supernatural “Other World” along with or without dragons and […]

On Transcendental Singularity #228 –Robert M. Shelby, 11-10-13. (688 txt wds)

What do we need to understand about poetry? — this thing many try to write or recite? Maybe how it gets created? With all the arts, for  each art,  whether  visual,  literary,  auditory  or kinesthetic, there is first a craft — of which the artist or writer needs to learn as much as possible, along […]

Big Words I Could Have Said? #227 –Robert M. Shelby, 11-8-13. [639 txt wds]

Starting across Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue at Haste Street that morning in February, 1974, I’d lived half a block down-street, sixteen years before. Facing up-street eastward, reaching the other side of “Telly,” a hard-times looking fellow sold me his need to help poor dopers get unhooked from being down and out. He handed me a copy […]

Is U.S. stonewalling on space aliens? #226 –Robert M. Shelby, 10-30-13. [428 txt wds]

Discussing UFO’s at a table in Starbucks, two motorcyclists traded litanies of data they recalled about extra-terrestrial visitors and reports worldwide of strange events, as well as stories from seemingly sensible folks about things witnessed in secret government hangars and laboratories containing alien ships, equipment and contracted projects that back-engineered alien technology for U.S. scientific […]

Dispelling “Entitlement” Fog # 225 –Robert M. Shelby, 10-29-13. [947 txt wds]

The public suffers a constant barrage of disinformation, mischaracterization and wrong emphasis on Social Security, its funding and future. Those irresponsibly unaccountable for stirring up fog and worrisome forecasts do so in ways I often describe as “devilish,” not to demonize them wrongfully but to describe them accurately. In this parlance, a devil is someone […]

Devaluing the Rand? #224 –Robert M. Shelby, 10-29-13. [1005 txt wds]

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this evening, did exploratory surgery on Rand Paul’s political liver. His condition looks less than viable but he is clearly up to playing “dead man walking” for the rest of his term as junior senator from Kentucky. Rachel opens a new navel for Randy-boy by exposing how he plagiarized Wikipedia on […]