Irie (EYE-ree)—to be at total peace with your current state of being. The way you feel when you have no worries. (Jamaican)
The small-town paraders and bystanders were more than irie long before the procession began just before noon. This is a big deal in Christiansted. Everyone knows this isn’t the right day, but we’re on an island, so what the hey!
A mile south of our camp, we found a fallen sign next to a broken road leading uphill and west: Scenic Route. Our now-crumpled map, provided free at the airport days earlier by hopeful advertisers, 
echoed the invitation: Scenic Route. Our eyes met, questioned, then agreed. A right turn, and we were adventure-borne.
In minutes the winding pockmarks became new macadam, but our progress remained slow until we passed the yellow-flagged, plant-eating crew manning machines that chewed shoulder grass, weeds, and three-inch thick branches like Skoal. Read More
It took us eleven hours to connect from SFO to STX.
SFO—We will be gone eight days.
Tip #1: After checking to make certain that the shuttle schedule meshes with your flight plans, stay overnight at lodging near the airport if you have a 6:30 a.m. flight.
Tip #2: Choose a motel (we picked Red Roof Inn) that will let you park your car for the entire length of your trip. Their parking fees are almost always less than airport lots.
The total cost of lodging plus pre-paid parking was only two-thirds of what parking nearer the airport would have cost…plus, we did not Read More
This morning’s devastating earthquake in Chile (8.8 on the Richter scale) had an energy equivalent of approximately 15.8 gigatons of TNT (31,600,000,000,000 lbs). To put that in perspective, it is about as much energy as would be released by 300 of the largest thermonuclear bombs ever built (the USSR’s Tsar Bomba, detonated in Novaya Zemlya in 1961).
The largest earthquake ever recorded was the 9.5 magnitude 1960 Valdivia earthquake, also in Chile.
Just to put the Great Chilean Earthquake (an alternate name for the Valdivia quake) in its perspective, scientists estimate that the Yucatán Peninsula bolide (meteor) impact that created the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago and led to mass extinction of the dinosaurs and other species had the energy of almost 600 Valdivia earthquakes.
Like most families, the nostrums necessary to palliate childhood ills were administered by my mother and grandmother. One, however, came from my father, and until last night, I thought it was his invention.
Winter in Southern California is barely winter. But colds, coughs, and bad dreams can besiege a child in any clime.
I was six. My older brother was nine. Our baby brother was just months old. Dad came into the big boys’ bedroom to solve some medical or psychological problem. He carried two glasses of what appeared to be milk. My brother and I immediately noticed globules of melted butter floating on the surface of the warm liquid. We questioned.
“It’s a guggle-muggle,” Dad explained. “Drink.”
Under US Copyright Law, once a tune is recorded and released, others may record and release their own versions without explicit permission from the writers or the publisher. The process is simple: pay for a compulsory license. The rate is preset by statute.
I recently learned that in addition to the Jesters’ very successful 1948 album, Little Songs on Big Subjects (described by me here and here), there was almost identical album released on Vox Records by the Bachelors. I have not yet Read More
I began writing an obituary of J. D. Salinger, but given his reclusiveness and academia’s already exhaustive shelves of critical essaying, it morphed into a personal reflection on how Catcher in the Rye affected me and my 60’s world. But Greg Palast did it better (and faster), so I reprint his February 1, 2010, reflection below.
In the sixth grade, the Boys’ Vice-Principal threatened to suspend me from school unless I stopped carrying around The Catcher in the Rye I think because it had the word “fuck” in it. Since the Boys’ Vice-Principal hadn’t read the book – and I don’t think he’d ever read any book – he couldn’t tell me why.
But Mrs. Gordon was cool. She let me keep the book at my desk and read it at recess as long as I kept a brown wrapper over the cover.
I think J.D. Salinger Read More
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
—attributed to Josef Stalin in Boris Bazhanov’s
Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary, publ. 1992
Bev Harris is one of democracy’s watchdogs. She leads Black Box Voting, a non-partisan group that seeks transparent and honest elections. Here’s her unsentimental, hard-facts take on today’s important Senatorial election in Massachusetts.
SHINING A BRIGHT LIGHT ON AN UNDEMOCRATIC TACTIC
For 10 years, I’ve been watching a trend to manipulate elections Read More
