August 30, 2008 – 10:18 am
She certainly has the form. Does she have the substance?
With the televising of the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, image as a selector of electability began rising in importance. In our video-deluged world, how one comes across on the screen is critical. It’s what the broadcast industry used to call TVQ: (television quotient—personality popularity ratings, typically … Continue Reading »
More of my trip south from Naples Airport, during which my driver, a 40-ish local with no pretensions about his hometown, his country, or his government, continued his expatiation on his hometown, his country, and his government.
On Cultural History:
Italy has been conquered by others many times. For 200 years (I checked: 1504-1707 it was … Continue Reading »
It was the wrong season for whales. It was the wrong month for sea lions. The gulls only tolerated me and to be true, I enjoyed them only within my limited fascination for the inexplicable red spot on their yellow beaks. For the first 20 minutes, a lone brown pelican held my … Continue Reading »
“With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship dissolved miserably into creativity.” Thus spoke the cooper in his shop beside the flour mill, with no correction possible.
February 29, 2008 – 6:16 am
Today is Leap Day. We add this extra day in February if the year is evenly divisible by four. That’s once every four years. Right?
Wrong.
February 28, 2008 – 8:28 am
Hidden behind a fishing boat, a strange craft is silently lowered into the water. The inventor, David Bushnell, has named it “Turtle” because of its shape…and because it is a submarine. It carries a single bomb and its mission is sabotage.
A thin young man named Ezra Lee hands Bushnell a final letter for … Continue Reading »
February 23, 2008 – 8:12 am
Ellis Island
So here’s how the story goes, as told to me by my Uncle Max (long-deceased).
Somewhere in the early 1880s, a man by the name of Tudrus Zlutchin (another branch of the family claims that the surname was Dudek) landed at Ellis Island from Russia with his wife and three (maybe two, maybe four) children. … Continue Reading »
February 22, 2008 – 9:35 am
Administration after administration has perceived Cuba as an irritant inside our hemispheric shell and coated it with layer after layer of economic and political nacre, which unlike mother-of-pearl, has not created value. In fact, U.S. policy has rendered Cuba nearly irrelevant.
Fidel, of course, has been the focus of our sedimentary relationship, one that has … Continue Reading »
February 20, 2008 – 10:17 am
What actually happens is not always in the history books.
I grew up in California in the 50’s, graduating from high school in 1961, only 16 years after World War II ended. So how was it possible that in all my classes there was not one mention of the internment of Americans of Japanese … Continue Reading »
February 16, 2008 – 5:47 am
At Little Big Horn National Monument, a low, iron railing surrounds the modest, marble slabs that mark where each white man fell. The fenced rectangle is smaller than my back yard. Custer’s Last Stand…for 123 years an immense celebration of an ignominious outrage. The day is overcast, cold, and wet. Forty-eight degrees … Continue Reading »
