War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
A swelling interest in George Orwell, in a swelling Orwellian age of WikiLeaks and worldwide mega- surveillance — art imitating life, and life becoming a movie. Robert Butler at Intelligent Life magazine reviews the literature of a cultural, social motif for an age, “1984,” a tale of the times, from Orwell’s literary executor Bill Hamilton: ‘“We’re…
As the now-infamous ‘CIA Torture Report’ continues to wedge down the digestive tract, some upshots — one, how effective Sen. Mark Udall’s outrage speech this morning on the floor of the Senate:’““One disturbing finding: [CIA] Director Brennan and the CIA are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other…
Today Emily Dickinson would be 184 — a nice, round, unobtrusive age for someone who’d been wonderful to have known at least for a time, brief or not, during those first 56 years. Dickinson has always been one of my favorite writer of words, and the most-truest of poets. She wrote passion for passion’s sake,…
Thickly-overcast and gloomy this Tuesday evening here on this little stretch of California’s north coast — rain a-coming big-time. Today is also torture-awareness day (via The Daily Beast): ‘Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold,…
Rain and more rain this Wednesday morning on California’s north coast, but we get breaks between downpours, sometimes even with sunshine, but nothing like down in LA County — Meteorologist Curt Kaplan: ‘“Yesterday, we had six straight hours of rain.”‘ So much so, records shattered dating to 1961. And with all that wet, the inevitable…
Sunshine splashed with clouds this Monday afternoon on California’s north coast — only rain so far was early this morning, but more is expected before this particular front calls it quits. One of the big news items as of right now has been going on for nearly six months — the insane drop in oil…
Drizzling rain and thickly-overcast this early Sunday, the last day of November, here on California’s north coast — we’re feeling the trailing remnants of a big storm now sweeping southward. So big the weather-front, counties south of the Bay Area opened ‘sandbag stations,’ in case of flooding off the storm — so ‘uncommon lately,’ TV…
Way-wet and chilly this early Friday on California’s north coast, but nothing unexpected as we’re on the first-strike, forefront of a big storm set to roll across the state the next couple of days. Our region could get three to four inches of rain, further south, maybe up to seven inches between now and Sunday/Monday…
Overcast and rainy-looking on California’s north coast this early Thursday — i.e., Thanksgiving — as well as it should be, a big storm is supposedly swirlin’ our way. According weather reports, the storm is the biggest in years, for this time of year and in a short space — we could get up to three…
My usual turkey-day hi-jinks of reality, via Mr. Mark Twain: “Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for–annually, not oftener–if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of…
