My Facebook page is rife with pictures of crocuses and daffodils springing from the damp soil.  Temperate weather is ahead, my friends want to assure me   I see their selfies as they stand in waiting lines at airports or pat a camel somewhere on the African continent.  Winter is l

Writer Keven Baker’s modest proposal, tongue-in-cheek, is spiked with enough telling arguments to make me wonder why blue states go on funding the insanities of red states.  (“Bluexit,” by Keven Baker, New Republic, April 2017, pg. 19-25.) In 2015, when Texans circulated t

My Yahoo news page came up with the following headline, recently: “Bernie Sanders followers are among the smartest…  They don’t believe anything.  The post must have proof…”   I didn’t read further. I’m not a Bernie Sanders fan, though some of my Facebook friends hav

James Wolcott in a recent essay pokes his finger at the thorn of my discontent.  We are in a period of hysteria where the political alt-right and alt-left, overblown with fears and secretly hoping for a revolution, begin to sound the same.  As Wolcott explains, the two sides may not

Part of me identifies with Donald Trump.  When a politician wants to get something controversial done, the media is as welcome as mosquitoes at a fishing hole. Sometimes journalists do a shoddy job of covering the issues.  Sometimes the headlines are out of cinque with the  story,

After three months of living with Donald Trump and hoping for the best, I continue to be dumbfounded by the strength of his support among women. We know  53% of white women supported him in the last election. (“Feminist Fall,” by Jessa Crispin, New Republic, March 2017.)  Why th

I saw several references to PewDiePie on Facebook, recently, and also in the gossip area of my Yahoo page.  Whether the name belonged to a person or a dessert, I didn’t know and didn’t much care.  But the buzz grew until it piqued my curiosity.  For my readers, many of whom are

The famous Guggenheim Museum began as  a private collection. (Blog 2/20/17)  An admirer of the old masters, Solomon R. Guggenheim was weaned away from them by a friend who took him to see the work of Vasily Kandinsky.  That was the beginning of a love affair with modern art and Gug

The Overton Window is the current term for moving the inert political middle to the right or the left.  It refers to “the range of policies on any given issue that are, at the moment, popular enough for a politician to campaign on successfully.” (“A Theory of Everything,” by

J. K. Rowling’s criticism of Donald Trump is raising hackles on the internet. His loyal fans, once her loyal fans, are behaving like jilted lovers and threatening to burn their Harry Potter books in retaliation. Rowling says, “Go ahead. I’ve still got your money.” (Click)  Pr