“You White people don’t understand what it’s like to be black in America!” Two years after Ferguson, a longer time after Trayvon Martin, the shooting deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, followed by the massacre of five…
Maybe 100 years from now they’ll be talking about June 23 as the British people’s “Fourth of July.” Because in a referendum on that date, the people of the UK voted that their answer to “EU” is “pee-u,” and they…
Paul McCartney: The Life, by Philip Norman — Little, Brown and Company. 2016 “The Cute One”? That’s how Philip Norman saw the Beatles’ Paul McCartney for many years. John Lennon was the brilliant, witty, edgy musical genius who was “three…
The Mulatto Messiah, drunk with power over the numerous presidential edicts he’s issued which the spineless Republican-led Congress has done absolutely nothing about, has now jumped with both feet into the current brouhaha about transgendered people — whatever THAT means…
Jacob Schutte, a lonely bachelor farmer in the early 1900s, goes each Sunday to a different church to partake of the “dinner on the ground” offered to any with the 25 cents it costs to eat. On this particular Sunday,…
This short story is based on my memories of an uncle of mine; on a reminiscence by my dad about his growing-up years, just at the time this story takes place; and on my memories of my own life. But…
OK, national GOP leaders: Everyone got their pistol loaded and ready? Good! Now, everybody aim their weapons down toward the floor. One, two, three, FIRE! BOOM! That exercise is called, “Shooting yourself in the foot.” And that’s just what the…
Benjamin Franklin, one of our most well-beloved Founding Fathers, never served as president of the United States. He was born too early (1706) so that by the time the first president (George Washington) was elected, Franklin was a frail 83…
The title of the movie was almost poetic: “Song of the South.” The actors were charming and believable — especially James Baskett as Uncle Remus, who became one of the best-known characters in American literature, partly via the 1946 Disney…
In just about two months — April 23, to be exact — the world will observe a double anniversary of the greatest literary man to ever live on this earth. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, on April 23,…
If you follow social media, or keep up with politics, as I do, you’re probably angry, frustrated, depressed, and wishing something — ANYTHING — would happen to break this cycle we seem to be stuck in. We’ve had our happy,…
This old year, 2015, has been a real doozy, hasn’t it? Most of us will feel a relief when it ends at midnight tonight. Well, at least, I will. But I suspect many, many would agree with me. The Islamic…
This Christmas story will, I hope, show that sometimes, during the magic of the Yuletide season, people at odds with one another due to religious doctrine or other factors, can learn to “love thy neighbor,” as the Bible directs. ——…
Are there really such things as “guardian angels” — people, or “beings,” who suddenly appear, mysteriously, at just the right place and time, to save human beings who have become too timid and cowardly to save themselves? If you’ve ever…
The election clock is moving on, with less than a year now before we go to the polls and elect a new president of the United States. In this year of the outsider, the non-politician (witness Donald Trump, Dr. Ben…
Heard about the three atheists who walk into a bar? The first yells, “God damn, I’m thirsty! Give me a beer!” The second cries, “Jesus Christ! Where the hell is the bartender?” The third looks at them, dismayed, and says,…
It was 100 years ago this past March — 1915 — that “The Birth Of A Nation” was released to American theaters. It was a landmark film on the American Civil War — or the War Between the States; and…
Did you ever suddenly, unexpectedly, run into some good friends that you hadn’t seen since grade school? And find out that all the things you liked about them, things they had said and done when you were all young, came…
“There’s nothing we can do about it!” I think that’s one of the most contemptible sentences in the English language. And nowadays, we here it from everybody, starting with the politicians in Washington, the governors in our state capitals, our…
ROCKABILLY! It was the transition American popular music, between rhythm ‘n’ blues, country and western, and the melding of the two into the rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s. Its heyday didn’t last a long time — but at its…
It’s one year since Michael Brown got himself killed (by being extremely stupid) in Ferguson, Missouri, and of course the black agitators in that city used that anniversary as an excuse to mount more riotous “protests” about the incident. “Black…
OK: Do you think King Louis XIV could defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president in the 2016 election campaign? Too bad the Sun King is otherwise occupied (he’s been dead now for 300 years). He and Trump…