"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
From an article titled State of Terror, written by Keith Gessen and published by The New Yorker on November 6, 2017: Stalin soon began to receive warnings of an imminent German invasion. Despite the ravages of the Terror, his anti-Nazi spy network was still the best in the world. Hitler issued a top-secret order for […]
Remorse, yes; major-sin remorse, no. More like mild feelings of guilt for neglecting the blog, and you, my reader. I knew this would happen when I took on a competing writing task, my memoir, which creeps along in the background, one painfully-extracted sentence at a time. The day before yesterday I sent out a Paulgram newsletter. One of the […]
I’m assuming everyone is up on the story of the Texas lady with the “Fuck Trump and Fuck You for Voting for Him” sticker on her pickup truck and how a local sheriff threatened to arrest her for displaying it, and later did arrest her on another pretext, and how she’s back on the streets […]
I walked Mr. B around the neighborhood this morning. Donna, who was watching from the family room as we came up the street on our way home, saw a coyote stalking us from behind. I never had a clue. I’d better start training myself to check six again. Our new dachshund is a standard, considerably larger […]
My niece Rebecca takes National Novel Writing Month seriously. I think the world of her, so I’m taking it seriously too. She sent a Google Doc link to her work in progress. I reciprocated with a link to mine, a chapter of a planned memoir. I was happy with it when I finished it a couple of months ago, but am less […]
We have Throwback Thursdays and Follow Fridays, so why not Catch-Up Wednesdays? Gosh knows I have some catching up to do. Last week’s visitors, Terry and Judy, motored up to Phoenix for InterAmericas Hash and we had a quiet weekend to ourselves. Monday our friend Angie, also a hasher, came down after InterAmericas to spend a few […]
As Trump and his court crank up the volume of their attacks on “fake news,” their actual agenda is increasingly clear: they want news that makes Trump look bad suppressed, possibly even outlawed, like they do for dictators and royalty in other countries.
A year after 9/11, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas casinos. Local authorities were informed, but no alert was issued because the casinos didn’t want tourists scared away. I blogged about it at the time, and wondered afterward why such an obvious target for terrorism had never been attacked.