It was an evening in the mid-1970s and I was riding with my dad in his pickup. The AM radio was tuned to 1180 WHAM and Ed Hasbrouck’s talk show was on. The topic was the American economy, which at that moment wasn’t doing very well. Ed was recalling the bank failures of the Great […]
Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam As we prepare to bury the life we have known And accept that from now there’ll be no going home Your money’s no longer worth saving The meat is all gone, we’re left nothing but bones For the times, they are a changin’ Apologies to Bob Dylan, but […]
A reader said to me the other day, “You’re stuff’s getting dark lately.” She was right; it has. I don’t know what to do about that, given I define the mission of this site as calling it as I see it. Right now, it looks dark. If it’s any consolation, it’s worse if you live […]
When I was a young man, I read (as every young person should) Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” a novel about the absurd bureaucracy of war and the misery it wreaks on those caught within it. The most absurd character in the book is Milo Minderbinder, who – at least initially – runs the mess hall. A […]
Because there’s an energy crisis, we have gone to daylight savings earlier in the year. Because we’ve gone to daylight savings earlier in the year, it was still light when Adrienne and I arrived at the sidewalk in front of the Unitarian Church just before 5 p.m. for the vigil. How many times have we […]
Where Things Used to Be
I’ve been driving around southern Louisiana this week. It’s my first visit in three years, since I was here in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Life has changed here. I’m not sure if Louisianans live in the future while the rest of us live in the present or if they live in the present while […]