Pharewell, Phil: Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)
On this day, the fortieth anniversary of his untimely death, I come to praise Philip K. Dick, not to bury him.
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Cold War Finally Made Hot, and Not By Proxy
Soldiers from the Minnesota Army National Guard on an exercise with British, Polish, and Lithuanian forces, in the Suwalki Gap in southern Lithuania, 2017. The Gap has been called the new Fulda Gap. (Photo courtesy of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota Army National Guard Public…
Remembering Robert Lowell on His Birthday
I was seduced by the tautness of his language and the grandiosity of his worldview.
The Drumbeat of War
At the times we most need to communicate calmly and comprehensively, we blur and obfuscate, posture and lie, or package the news in clichés. That is a telltale sign that the speech serves a private agenda, not the common and urgent need for clarity.
John F. Kennedy, the Fair-haired Catholic Boy of American Politics
John F. Kennedy was a twentieth-century man and a twentieth-century politician but he seemed like fresh air and change because of his youth and verve. Logevall’s biography adds to the literature that students and history buffs can use to judge for themselves.
Nothing Works for Everybody
What is a “good” night’s sleep, anyway? Like pornography, we know it when we experience it, waking happy and bright, stretching luxuriantly.
The Snake Island 13
Screenshot from video said to be shot by Snake Island guards, on social media The bravery and devotion to duty of the small State Border Guard Service garrison on Snake [Zmiinyi] Island, an outpost of Ukrainian territorial boundaries in the Black Sea, has been much on social media.
The Smurf Glass Incident
Courtesy Corey Coyle, CC 3.0 Unported For a time, back in the Reagan-Bush era, I was a teen employee in a Hardee’s in coal country. By incompetence I had failed upward, away from the fry station and off the backline, to work the front counter, and then that…
How Words Can Change a War
Borders are curious things. They change. Those who benefit claim that the new borders are set in stone; those who lose claim the old borders were set in stone. And in time, the borders will change again, perhaps benefiting a third party.
Michael Harrington’s The Other America
In 1962 Michael Harrington’s "The Other America: Poverty in the United States" was published. It was truly one of those remarkable books that fundamentally changed the nature of the debate. Like Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring" published the same year, it managed to draw attention to a significant but largely unrecognized threat to the country.