In several preceding essays in these pages I have, probably according to some readers, overly enthusiastically excoriated Christianity, Capitalism, and what I regard as their unholy marriage.* The user would…
Preamble: The following is from my 2007 book, The Stranger is Me. It seemed appropriate to post on this St. Patrick’s Day and in remembrance of my late wife, nee Patricia Ann…
Gustave Flaubert might not have been the first, but he was perhaps the most successful novelist at expressing an oppressive monotony of mid-19th C French provincial life. While France was…
If we begin with the proposition that “immigrants” is only a relevant term when there is a pre-existing, indigenous population, then anyone arriving in the Americas after the settlement of…
The language is English, but the theme is one that might be heard in Arabic, Farsi, Pashtoon, Urdu, Hebrew, or in a variety of other languages and dialects around the…
In honor of CPAC, the annual right-wing cavalcade of clowns. We have always known they were stupid; they reconfirm it with every inane utterance about how government is the enemy,…
Their corporate image was only slightly less ubiquitous than Coca-Cola’s, eye-catching crimson and yellow brand. Kodak. For people around the world it meant snapshots, 35mm slides, and badly exposed 8mm…
Nothing quite exemplifies American corporatism as does the almost cartoonish CEO visage of Mitt Romney. A man of many mansions and $150 ties purchased by his questionably–gotten millions, he now…
I took special notice of a recent item in the news. Most of what is reported in the news media––and we know that most of that is negative and depressing––has…
Over the years I have been to probably hundreds of cities in over 70 countries around the world. A lot of them I have written about. But there are some…