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The 84-Year-Old on the Ladder
“But Verne seems not to have a similar ‘governor.’ And I believe men, especially young men, are genetically programmed to view, and treat, themselves as cannon fodder. Not only do they generally overestimate…
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From Keats through Kolbert: I’m Still Writing Poetry
“I now accept that Keats’s words are not ‘immortal’—no one will read sonnets (nor read anything) when the last Homo sapiens is gone. No sentient being will recall what language even was, when…
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Cruz, Trump & Kasich: The Three Heads of Cerberus
“Whichever head you listen to, the bark may be slightly different but the bite is the same: vote Republican in 2016 and you’re voting for the whole Tea Party megillah. It’s a nativist,…
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The Demagogue Cometh (Again): Trump
“In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, the Republican Party has been hijacked by a demagogue. Along with everyone else in the twittering class, I’ve waited several months too long to make…
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The Trumpocene Era
“I have known, for decades, that American discourse was degenerating into babble; that the American academy was becoming, more and more, a dumbed-down, profit-based, high-school-equivalency engine; that American society was devolving into race-,…
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The Affluenza Candidate: Trumpelstiltskin
“Donald Trump is an ugly, ugly man. He has a face which expresses, to perfection, his inner monster. He wears a bloated body which, like Jabba the Hutt’s (down to the near-naked trophy…
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Waking, Again, to Consciousness with the Word, Spoken
“So . . . Once upon a time, O Best Belovéd, these were the books that made me a reader and writer; the books that made me me, to a very large extent;…
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Easter Brides & Christmas Widows
“The 19-year-old, in her white dress, plights her troth, in a moment of blind hope and splendid passion, and will not want whispered in her ear that the man at her side will…
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Down On My Knees Before The Grinch
“Where we live, in north-central Florida, patience is not a virtue but an absolute necessity. The community here, especially at such emporia as Hallmark, is largely in its late 70s and 80s, and…
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Grieving in Advance: The Sixth Extinction
“I have asked, I have begged, all of you to read Elizabeth Kolbert’s book so that at least we will be on the same page. We are on the same planet and if…