As has been written elsewhere, Thanksgiving is the best of all American holidays. It commemorates nothing. Especially now that the indigenous North American people are letting the rest of us know they regard the arrival of Europeans on these shores as a parasitic invasion.
Columbus Day, anybody? Continue reading We Have Plenty Yet We Are Poorer
This is the season when silence is most pronounced. From Thanksgivings until New Year’s Days now almost a decade has passed since familiar cacophony last accompanied holiday life. Continue reading Lost Laughter
The France Jenkins ultimately fought in, no, for, was unlike anywhere else he’d been in life. Loud as moving trains were, the clamor of war deafened. No. When the Germans unleashed sufficient concentrated and sustained fire sound numbed. Continue reading Soldiers of the Great War (Part Two)
Once again, that most American of holidays is upon us. Thanksgiving. That day may be our finest national holidays because it commemorates nothing. Nor does it beg solemnity for anything.
Doesn’t Thanksgiving typify us? The fourth Thursday in November just insists we wallow in mindless gluttony while passionately pursuing socio-political points as we solidify family grudges. Continue reading Shallow Thanks
Hear music as ether. Good ether.
With zero apologies to Marcel Proust, music not madeleines better allow ourselves to re-immerse ourselves in the past and fully revivify it. Not so much live music at that as tunes sound engineers have massaged down to their last notes. To me, too much concert music sounds ragged. Live performances allow bands license to mess with the perfection which either narcotized or motivated me in the first place.
I generally prefer my ether unadulterated and exactly the way I’ve come to favor it. Continue reading Good Ether
Oh man! Did I have a great time writing the three stories comprising Cool Brass, or what?
When I wrote for newspapers my first immediate chief was an editor who loved quoting Red Smith’s dictum. The late Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times sportswriter likened our craft to “opening a vein.”
Puh-lease. Continue reading No Atonement Kabuki