We are deep in the middle of the part of life Hollywood leaves out of every movie: the long in-between. This is the time when we grieve for the immediate past and fret for the near future. At best, this period might be shown in a movie as a calendar, with the pages tearing away […]
Today is Thanksgiving, the American holiday, and when we bow our heads over the turkey, many of us will take an extra moment to contemplate our civic good fortune and count the blessings of our American values. There’s been a good deal of talk about American values in the past few months – American values […]
A federal court in San Francisco last week threw out a five billion-dollar punitive damage award in the case of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The court called the award excessive and ordered a lower court judge to reduce the amount. In the 12 years this thing has been floating through the legal system, Exxon […]
It’s been two months since the launch of this post-modern war and Americans have done a great job of rallying around the flag, but any moment now, we’re going to have to start shutting down the free lunch. I know, it’s war, these things take time, there’s an international coalition we have to keep together, […]
The first thing you see as you approach Ground Zero is the smoke. You see it hanging between buildings, catching the autumn sun. You wonder if that’s it, if that’s The Smoke, or is it just some of normal exhalation of a busy city. Then The Smell wafts toward you and you know the smoke […]
Other than that, it’s been a beautiful autumn in northern New England. Days are warm and clear, nights have yet to bring a hard frost to the Champlain Valley. The tomato plants are still producing in abundance, still flowering even. We’ve been eating tomatoes from our garden for over three months. National Guard fighter jets […]
Stop Beating Your Wife
Last Saturday, December first, my probation ended and I was returned to full-fledged citizenship. I was arrested in late August with some folks from Greenpeace for occupying a coal-burning, carbon dioxide-spewing power plant in Salem, Massachusetts. We were trying to make a point about global warming. The local judge all but thanked us for protesting, […]