There is the iconic scene in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" where Linus and Charlie Brown are out shopping for a tree to include in their Christmas Pageant. They stroll together through the quietly falling snow, guided by searchlights to the Christmas tree lot, where they are surrounded by all manner of 1960′s Christmas trees: gold ones, pink ones, red ones, each laden with garland and | Read More »
I’m tired. I really am tired. And, I am very nearly at my wits end. I now have a flavor, a tiny inkling, of what it must have been like to be a Jew in the Third Reich. I can now understand (in very small measure) how a poor black woman in the rural south after reconstruction must have felt. I can hear the echos | Read More »
My oldest brother was a “Conscientious Objector” during the Vietnam War. To this day, he counts this achievement as among the finest accomplishments of his life. To hear him explain it, very few who were not official members of the Society of Friends were able to garner a “C.O.”; but he did. And now, all these long years later, my brother lives by himself in | Read More »
From the diaries by Erick. Harold Stassen ran for President every quadrennial between 1948 and 2000. Why? What would cause a man to do such a thing? Quite probably because he’d tasted the sweet essence of victorious electoral power, first as a county prosecutor, and then as Governor of Minnesota. He thus served from 1940 to 1943. He played the role of a minor king-maker | Read More »
-By Barack Obama (Sung to the Tune of “Cold Kentucky Rain”, by Elvis Presley) Two lonely years, and three dozen czars ago I reached out at Grant Park, and you all cheered I sure knew why I’d run, with the Election I had won All I know, is this is exactly what you all feared… So I’m ridin’ in the rain, goin’ to make a | Read More »
Here’s how Paul Simon wrote about pages falling from the calendar, oh so many sweet songs ago: I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long– Time hurries on, and the leaves that are green have turned to brown… There is a sadness, here at the edge of autumn. The peach-colored sunsets of July have dwindled | Read More »
Kreuger Beer was cutting edge. It didn’t come in a bottle, as nearly every drop of beer consumed in America outside of a bar was previous to its debut in 1940. No, Kreuger came in a can , which was damn near heresy. Beans came in cans, not beer. The Krueger Beer can was funky looking, too: They called it a "conetop" in the beer | Read More »
All Rightee then… The pronouncements have come down from On High: The Tea Party troglodytes lumbered down from the hills and hollers, wrecked poor Mike Castle, Sue Lowden, and Lisa M. (How Michael Bennet, Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson fit into this puzzle is open to debate. Maybe these are the exceptions proving the rule, I guess) If only these rubes, led by the pitchfork | Read More »
Frank Woodruff Buckles was a tenacious young man. He looked young, even for his 16 years. But, he was determined to join the fight. It seemed as if civilization itself hung in the balance, and the world was aflame with war. He would not be left out of it. So, he lied to his first recruiter, a nice man who admonished him to go on | Read More »
I miss piles of leaves fragrantly smoldering in gravel driveways. I miss the neighborhood pickup games of football in the vacant meadow amongst the burdock, kids with no helmets, no uniforms and the game was "aerial flash". I miss the gentle, self-deprecating humor of Mary Tyler Moore, and the live, unpredictable talent of Soul Train. I miss big, catholic families where the oldest brother was | Read More »
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