(President Warren G. Harding. A conservative politician from Ohio, Harding had few enemies because he rarely took a firm enough stand on an issue to make any.) “There isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves […]

“The Ancient Mayan calendar speaks of 12-12-2012 as the end of times as we know it, and the beginning of a new cycle of evolution for planet earth, humanity and the cosmos. Mayan elders say that the Ancients were informing the modern world to be ready for a giant transformation for the human race…December 2012 […]

(The workers swarm up the flanks of Big Pink at 0730. Photo Socotra). I am up but groggy. I do not want to go to DIA this morning, but off I will have to go to make an eleven o’clock meeting. Even a full pot of Dazbog Russian Roast coffee TM is not having the […]

(Ms Maureen Bridgid Dowd, 60, in 2008. Photo Denise Williams.) I have no sense of what Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama discussed yesterday behind closed doors. I hope something is happening that will enable cooler heads to prevail, and some compromise can be found to accommodate something short of complete disaster, but I have no […]

How the heck did this happen? Two weeks to Christmas? Maybe it is because we don’t call it that, anymore. I think we are just being polite, you know, don’t want to offend anyone, after all, and inclusive is a good thing to be. Still, just calling it “the holidays” sort of robs it of […]

(A view of the abandoned Eddystone Hotel near the Detroit Masonic Temple, largest in the world, and sort of threadbare. Photo Socotra.) There is such a lot not to talk about this morning. I am piling up crap to take to the farm and to the dump and am not completely sure which pile is […]

(Pearl Harbor, 0755…While the Giant Slept. Image copyright Dru Blair.) You know what day it is. National Public Radio played a few bars from the old song that advises us to remember before they got on with some wild assertions from the President of the World Bank, Dr. James Kim, and analysis of the Right […]

(PR photo of Dave Brubek in 1956. Photo AP). I was thinking about the passing of Dave Brubeck, whose astonishing syncopated time-scales links me back to the little dining room in the house on Chester Street in Birmingham, Michigan. Dad was an aficionado of cool jazz, and I recall dancing with my brother and sister […]

I am shivering a little this morning with mental exhaustion. I just finished the tribute issue of the Quarterly for Mac Showers and shipped it off to lay-out, and it was both emotional and hard, since I had to scoop up some representative stories from our long collaboration to illustrate some of his remarkable life. […]

(Great-Great Uncle Patrick, the loveable rogue of the 10th Tennessee (Irish). Photo Griffin Archives.) One of the things that appeals to me most about Refuge Farm is the sound of the night, which is to say, not much of it, except the barking of the dogs up the road and the sound of the trains. […]