"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Snagged from Facebook, five minutes ago: I’m currently struggling through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book I realized I had never read. The hardest part, for me, is the depiction of white attitudes toward blacks in mid-1800s America, and the language used to convey those attitudes. And then I remember growing up with whites who still […]
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier Stories for and about adolescents follow certain established conventions. Brave young boys and girls stand up to social and peer pressure, buck conformity, and do the right thing. They look bullies in the eye and the bullies back down. The bad guys lose. The good guys experience adversity but […]
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is an engrossing, impossible-to-put-down story of discovery and redemption, told by a child prodigy, a master cartographer at the […]
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” — Humphrey Bogart (as Rick Blain), Casablanca (1942) The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) Something about this movie bothers me. No, it isn’t that it plunges me into shame, anger, despair, horror, and sadness. No, it isn’t […]
Last night a neighbor came over with some work shirts he wanted Donna to embroider. We asked him how things were going with his heating & air conditioning business. He told us business was great. With all the new green energy tax credits available to consumers, he’d been selling a lot of solar-powered water heaters. […]
From Wikipedia: The “Powell Doctrine” is a journalist-created term, named after General Colin Powell in the run-up to the 1990-1991 Gulf War . . . The Powell Doctrine states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States: Is a vital national security interest […]
In its last years, West Berliners covered the Wall (which came down 20 years ago today) with paint, political statements, street art, and graffiti. Many Americans, when they picture the Berlin Wall, see it in color. That’s not what I remember. Both times I saw the Wall, it was forbiddingly gray. In 1966, Donna and […]
Photos from same: Our friend Mary Ann put on a birthday dinner for me and our guest Rudy, who was visiting from Las Vegas. I recently turned 63 and Rudy’s about to turn 72. Unfortunately, Mary Ann stepped out of the frame to take this photo, so I’ll stick a photo with her in it […]