Nothing better than….
…having Christopher Clark read aloud — just to you — his own current explorations into revolutions of the past. For global readers and thinkers, it “just don’t get much better ‘n this”….
Continue reading →What next?
As we watch Trump’s closest legal counselor marched off to serve a three-year prison term, the world wakes up this morning with the understanding that the president of the United States is the oligarch of an international criminal enterprise. Aside … Continue reading →
On Language & Literature:
A little history
of Technological Aesthetics
The tone and form of newspaper headlines, the copy-editor’s headline-writing style still in practice today, was developed for fast, efficient, and practical use of the telegraph machine, after 1850. Most US telegrams, back then, were fewer than 15 words. Fast-forward … Continue reading →
From the Archive: Introduction
to a Community Discussion Guide
This is the Introduction to a community Discussion Guide for West Virginia: A Film History As Lon Savage suggests, there are many wonderful reasons for West Virginians — or other Americans, for that matter — to take interest in history … Continue reading →
United Mind Workers: Vision & Mission
This is related to my next fiction. (cc) Topper Sherwood VISION STATEMENT Labor in the future is better because Intellectual Workers, globally, are organized. Teachers, politicians, actors, journalists, and other cultivators/producers of ‘Spiritual-Intellectual’ Labor (geistige Arbeit) are recognized for serving … Continue reading →
Mary Lee Settle (1918-2005)
The thing that impressed me most about the writer Mary Lee Settle (1918-2005) was her intellect — in the questions she chose to pursue and the all-fulfilling ways she pursued them. When she spoke to us in Charleston, for example, … Continue reading →
A Small East-West Fiction
“Why do you do that?” she asked him. “Do what?” “You call something ‘the best-ever.’ ” “Do I?” “A lot.” He thought about it. “I guess because it’s a popular expression. In English,” he shrugged. “In American, you mean,” she … Continue reading →
Lessons of the 20th Century
(Journalism)
I “came up” as a journalist in Charleston, West Virginia (pop: 72,000, then), first working for a newspaper, the Charleston Gazette. I fell in love with the Gazette and the people there, because it exhibited more daily integrity than any … Continue reading →
Origins of Anti-Semitism in Europe:
‘A New Hypothesis’
Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism: ‘A New Hypothesis’ “(T)he great outburst of anti-Semitism in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages (1000-1300) and, carrying over into the Later Middle Ages (1300-1500) and into modern times, was due not so much to … Continue reading →