We have officially entered the “Holiday Season.” I started writing this post on Thanksgiving, which will be followed by Christmas and the start of the New Year. These are supposed to be joyous times. At this point, I have seen a lot of Thanksgivings come and go. For most of my life, it was easy to think of things for which I could truly feel grateful. This year, that’s not the case. Of course, there are things for which I am grateful, but my concerns about the state of our nation have put a damper on my gratitude. This is, . . . → Read More: Thanksgiving, 2017
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 Comments are closed  Blog  assassination, Big Enders, Buddhism, Christianity, Christmas, Civil Rights, Donald Trump, global warming, graduate school, holiday season, human history, Islam, Jonathan Swift, joyous times, Korea, Little Enders, Martin Luther King, music, my tribe, New Year, not with a bang but a whimper, political unrest, President Kennedy, range wars, religion, Richard Nixon, Shakespeare, social activism, T.S. Eliot, Thanksgiving, The Hollow Men, Vietnam, Watergate, WWII I haven’t been consistent with posting to my blog, primarily because I have been depressed about the current state of politics in the States. This morning it occurred to me that our current political situation is a little like going down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. We are currently expected to accept “alternative facts” as reality (and some actually do). Nothing is what it appears to be. As one who came of age in the 1960s, I well remember Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit: The year was 1967. I was in the Army and, . . . → Read More: Farther Down the Rabbit Hole Comments are closed Blog 1967, Africa, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice, army, Army Chaplain, Asia, Battle of the Greasy Grass, British Empire, Cambodia, Catch 22, Charge of the Light Brigade, Dutch, follow the money, French, French Indochina, George Custer, Grace Slick, Halliburton, Jefferson Airplane, Korean War, Little Big Horn, military failures, movies, news, Pete Seeger, Plains Indians, politics, rabbit hole, SE Asia, video games, Vietnam, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, War Profits, war-like conflicts, White Rabbit Just when I had essentially become numb to our current political situation, Las Vegas exploded in chaos as a result of a a planned attack of automatic weapons fire. Las Vegas was not the first mass shooting in US history. Here’s a brief (and limited) list: “The Top 10. Mass shootings, of course, are not the only gun deaths in the States. The US holds the world record for gun deaths not related to the carnage of war. The Second Amendment to the Constitution actually encourages gun ownership, primarily for citizens involved in a well-regulated militia. What the Framers . . . → Read More: Where to Begin Comments are closed Blog agri-business, agribusiness, Amadou Diallo, AR-15, automatic weapons, Constitution, corporate donations, coyotes, elections, Framers, government, Grauman's Theater, gun violence, guns, hand guns, hunting, Las Vegas, law enforcement, mallitia, militia, muzzleloaders, NRA, pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical business, politicians, politics, quick draw, Revolutionary times, rifles, Second Amendment, self-serving, shotguns, summer soldiers, training, weapons The term, loose cannon, has been around a long time. Cannons used on sailing vessels were large, typically weighing several tons. To avoid damage from the recoil when they were fired, they were mounted on rollers and secured with rope. The cannon jumped backwards when fired. If you have ever fired a weapon, you are familiar with recoil. The cannons get hot when they are used in battle, and each time a cannon is fired, it jumps higher and rolls farther. If the ropes holding the cannon secure were to break, a loose cannon would roll backwards and crush anything—or . . . → Read More: Loose Cannon on Deck Comments are closed Blog Allies, blood and soil, cannon, Civil Rights, fire and ice, fireworks, flash in the pan, Fourth of July, half-cocked, JFK, loose cannon, metaphor, muzzleloaders, Nazis, North Korea, not with a bang but a whimper, nuclear weapons, Plato, Richard Nixon, Robert Frost, sailing vessels, ship of state, shoot ones wad, T.S. Eliot, the Marshall Plan, U.S.S. Constitution, USS Constitution, Vietnam War, war, World War II Shakespeare’s original use of what has become a common saying, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” was about differences between the families of Vietnam War protests. Even the Charlottsesville, Virginia illustrate just how crazy political life in the States has become. The hostilities seem to have expanded, with election of Donald Trump seems to be proving my cousin right. One of the recent news stories says that the Vietnam War. I was one of those caught up in both the Vietnam War protests and the Civil Rights movement. Many of those I . . . → Read More: We Will All Go Down Together Comments are closed Blog 1960s, Billy Joel, Civil Rights, Civil War, Goodnight Saigon, GOP, hate, Pete Seeger, protests, Republicans, Romeo and Juliet, Rule of Law, Shakespeare, slavery, Trump, War in Vietnam With apologies to James Baldwin for appropriating his title: If people could actually “spin in their graves,” my guess is that he would be doing a very rapid rotation at this time, as would, I think, Abraham Lincoln and many others who have done their best to make the United States a better country than it has been in the past. We have taken at least one big step backwards with the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia. I am both angry and sad that “white nationalism” is on the march, and that the Ku Klux Klan is crawling out from . . . → Read More: The Fire This Time Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, Big Screen TVs, Charlottesville, Chinese Revolution, devolve, Donald Trump, evolve, French revolution, James Baldwin, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, lunch-counter protests, military, racial, racial violence, resentment, revolution, revolution Blacks, Russian revolution, screens, sit-ins, St. Louis, talking heads, Trump, TV, United States, video, Vietnam, Watts, white nationalism, white nationalists, zero sum game All major human conflicts are essentially what Jonathan Swift called the war between the “Big Endians” and the “Little Endians” in Gulliver’s Travels. In Swift’s novel, Lilliput and Blefuscu are island nations ruled by emperors. Those from Lilliput broke boiled eggs on the larger end, while those from Blefuscu broke their’s on the smaller end. Swift’s readers at the time would have recognized that his metaphor suggested that the British political parties at the time, the Whigs and Torys, were fighting a war based on minuscule and inconsequential differences. That appears to be a common theme in human history: Most . . . → Read More: The Faces of Humanity Comments are closed Blog animals, Ark, begats, Buddhists, Catholics, city-states, climate change, Denisovans, evolution, global warming, Gulliver's Travels, history, human conflicts, humanity, humans, In Memoriam A.H.H., Jonathan Swift, last straw, life force, metaphor, Neanderthals, Noah, oral transmission, original face, political parties, pollution, Protestants, record keeping, red in tooth and claw, religious war, Tennyson, tribes, war, written records, Zen Koan You may know the old saying, the darkest hour is just before dawn. While the saying isn’t literally true, it serves metaphorical purpose. First Light precedes astronomical dawn and provides the first proof that night is coming to an end. “Political night” has descended in the States, leading many to wonder whether “first light” is right around the corner. Many are hopeful. I’m not so sure. I think we (all of us) need to gain some perspective based on history. The history of humanity has been primarily wars and exploitation. War, of course, is not new. Tribes went . . . → Read More: Gaining Perspective Comments are closed Blog Africa, Bob Dylan, Charles Darwin, Communist Block, Communist Revolution, darkest hour, dawn, Europe, evolution, first light, follow the money, health care, history, humanity, Indo-china, Korean War, Masters of War, Medieval times, natural resources, perspective, Pete Seeger, politics, redistribution of wealth, slavery, stay woke, tribal warfare, tribes, uberwealthy, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, War in Vietnam, WWII I haven’t posted anything new in a while. I’ve been too busy reading the political news and wringing my hands. My sense is that the world situation is getting worse. We have, of course, had “dark days” in times past. I’m not sure there has ever been a time the planet was without at least one war going on. Most recently, in the States we experienced the World Wars (I and II), the Korean War, the “conflict” in Vietnam, and whatever is currently going on in the Mid-East. We’ve also had Civil Rights challenges, and various other conflicts and difficulties . . . → Read More: Dumbfounded, Discouraged, and Dismayed Comments are closed Blog Ark, be fruitful and fill the world, birth control, Bosnians, Civil Rights, Civil War, climate changer, Cosmic Energy, dark days, earth, economy, fifth extinction, food, gap between rich and poor, global warming, humans, intelligence, Korean Ware, logical consequences, mass extinction, news, Noah, Pogo, politics, Serbians, slavery, Southern Heritage, species, territory, the All That Is, the South, Trump to bring back coal, Vietnam War, Walt Kelly, WWII In previous blog entries, I have written about the way different communication channels influence the message received. We have known for a long time that the medium is the message. (See also Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage). One of the principal concepts behind the message inherent in the titles of books (including McLuhan’s) is that communication channels are themselves “messages.” The original discussion about this concept focused on the differences being communicated by print media and television. the movie, Medium Cool, was based on McLuhan’s concept that video was a “cool” medium, one that forced viewers to think . . . → Read More: Video or Text-Based Web Pages? Comments are closed Blog audio, Charles Dickens, communication channels, communication device, cool, dictation, email, film, Fireside Chats, Franklin Roosevelt, French revolution, Internet, live stream, Marshall McLuhan, Media Star, medium, message, movies, news, news pages, news weeklies, newspapers, Nineteenth century, paper-based mail, post literacy, postliteracy, postliterate, preliteracy, preliterate, reading, Tale of Two Cities, text, text-based communication, TV channels, video, watching, websites |
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