On The Scale of Self-Deceit and Frivolity Unto Extinction, there are points well beyond first-world problems. They indicate the extent to which life in the United States is luxurious enough that we can afford to make shit up to worry about. They also confirm the point made by Bill Maher that Americans are a silly […]
Last week I wrote about the lethal peril to which we find ourselves subject as the result of anthropogenic climate change and two of its perniciously wayward children, bomb cyclones and weather whiplash. Well, just when you thought it was safe … Last week, the Washington Post ran a story — “This weather phenomenon on […]
In the northeastern United States, where I happen to live, there’s an annual climate-change event. It’s called winter. During this event, the temperatures fall, as do little white flakes the natives call snow. We’ve already had seven or eight inches of the stuff fall this month. And there’s more to come: After a mostly calm […]
That may seem like an odd title for this post because it’s a celebration of the Holiday Season, a reflection of my incorrigibly stubborn hopefulness, and an acknowledgement of the inscrutability of human nature. So, perhaps I should explain. The world, as you likely know, is rife with turmoil. I say as you likely know […]
I wake up most mornings with questions on my mind. Generally, they’re relatively innocuous or inconsequential things like: Why do I have the theme from Mannix stuck in my head? Do bald men think toupees are fooling anybody? Why do so many people believe in gravity? Why do some Kindle books cost more than the […]
During my time as a student at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut — from which I earned a B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Philosophy — I had a teacher, Professor Langston, who’d earned his Ph.D. in Intellectual History. He was, therefore, justifiably enamored of the work of existentialist deconstrutionists and post-modernists such […]
Author’s Note: It’s entirely possible I watch too much C-SPAN. I don’t know. But I do know it gets increasingly difficult for me to understand what’s going on in the formerly United States, how we got here, and why we put up with it. Part of it, of course, results from the polarization to which […]
I don’t think I fully understood or appreciated the effect political correctness has had on language until I took my car to the repair shop one morning last week. Ernie, the service manager who wrote up my service order, told me he’d call to let me know what his team found, to get my permission […]
Some years ago, I wrote the first piece in what’s now, with the publishing of this piece, turned out to be a series. Who knew? A common expression says there are no guarantees in life. Since, as Grandpa O’Brien loved to say (among a million other things), “It’s the exception that proves the rule,” there […]
In the October 2nd episode of my program, The Anxious Voyage, I welcomed a guest named John Tejada. After being imprisoned on a sexual-assault charge, John wrote the manuscript for a book called, Searching for Redemption. During our conversation, I told John I’m conflicted, torn between two points of view: On one hand, I believe […]
