My profession, should you ask, is that of a life poet. You may not imagine what that is. The first thing a lifelong poet of humane living learns, takes a long, long time both in and out of schools. It concerns how language and mind work. Degrees are a matter of other people’s opinion. Either […]
There’s very little real humor in our politics, today, apart from Comedy Central, TV or Saturday Night Live. Where are the staged satires, the broadside lampoons, one-act comic operas, comedic stories and novels? Mostly, we are too jaded and sore. We’re sore about the state of things, the mess the nation is in, on many […]
Mainstream media is not giving the public a clear and full picture of how bad the Fukushima nuclear disaster is proving to be. The alternate news sources are doing a much better job. They are scary as hell! People who pay attention are banding together to urge the United Nations to take charge of the […]
George Monbiot writes today in Alternet: “It doesn’t matter how many windmills or solar panels or nuclear plants you build if you are not simultaneously retiring fossil fuel production. We need a global programme whose purpose is to leave most coal and oil and gas reserves in the ground, while developing new sources of power and reducing […]
For the last few years the Tea Party has been storing up Kool-aid for the rest of us. They think it’s an all-healing ambrosia, a magic elixir that solves the problems posed by the creeping menace of Socialism. They have been wrong. Their Kool-aid is laced with a poison fatal not just to democracy but […]
We should all grasp that our president, Barack Obama is not omniscient. But neither are you, Mr. Harsh Critic, who sees him and all he does darkly through glasses of — scotch? Viewing from outside the foul-line of Too-far-Right Field, you find nothing but vacuous incompetence and vacillation in decisions or actions taken by Obama. […]
Once again, J__ P___ seems to assume all he says is clearly evident to his readers. To me, His piece comes across as a pastiche of unsupported claims that form no logical argument but which web together another of his usual rants against everything Obama is, says and does. The insidious strength of P___’s writing […]
We have two homophones, words that sound the same but differ in spelling. Bass, as in bass fiddle or bass singer, signifies the lowest range of sound, vocal or instrumental. In this sense, “bass” comports with “base” in its moral dimension. Ignoring its chemical, geometric, architectural and logical meanings, when “base” is used in reference […]
Sophocles, for one, wrote (in Antigone): “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Any nation is crazed by splitting its populace into factions opposing each other. Persons go insane from wanting two or more incompatible things with equal intensity, such as orderly conduct and joyful abandon. Our nation wants both abundant, cheap energy […]
The important thing about prayer is not what we imagine we pray to, but that we can pray to no one or nothing in particular, and that it is as good for us, and as necessary communal experience. Our prayer draws us toward meditation if we are quiet about it, not trying to drown out our […]