In the year 731 BCE, a flotilla of eight fishing boats, each with about 6 people, men and women, on board, set sail from a village near present-day Cadiz in southern Spain, and, by a freak anomaly of wind and… Read More ›
Fiction
THE WORLD SINCE 1363
Whenever you’re in the moment – as distinct from what? outside of it? – it’s often difficult – no, make that impossible – to see it for what, if anything, it really means. But a moment takes its meaning from… Read More ›
ON THIS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY
All other things being equal – in this case being equally just anybody – some of us will be saints, some of us will be assholes, but most of us will be neither. For example, the likelihood of an American… Read More ›
Guest Post. Saturday Morning Pam-toons. A Speakeasy in the Age of Prohibition
What fascinates me about Speakeasies was the mingling between and relative equality of rich, poor, women, men, black and white. These illicit clubs helped with the momentum and success of civil rights movements. The current Prohibition with its categories of prohibited… Read More ›
RUMMAGING
The other day I happened to be looking out the window and I noticed someone in the alley rummaging through our garbage. He wasn’t one of, you know, those people. He was wearing a suit and a tie. And so,… Read More ›
THE TRUTH ABOUT JESHUA OF NAZARETH
People think that Moses and Jesus and Mohammed must have been incredibly charismatic. I don’t know about Moses or Mohammed. Never met them. But I can tell you that Jeshua of Nazareth was anything but. He was dour, in just… Read More ›
MY SIGNATURE PARLOUR SCHTICK
Seven years later, when I was twenty, there was an Italian film with a title translated into English as Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Seven years earlier, being only thirteen, that’s exactly what I was. And it was one… Read More ›
THE FIFTH PLANE
The plan was to take the flight out of Boston to Chicago, breach the cockpit when it reached cruising altitude, divert it south to Washington, and hit either the White House or the Capitol. And if both were still standing… Read More ›
AN OLD SOLDIER REMEMBERS
I was born in 1732, became a soldier at sixteen, fought in my country’s wars, lost an eye in one and an arm in another. So I was already an old man – too old for the battlefield – when… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 