Not Everything Trump Says Is A Lie
IN PLACE of what print journalists refer to as President Trump’s lies, cable commenters have a less formal term. Trevor Noah of the Comedy Channel and Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo of CNN just say “bullshit.” If that sums up Trump’s usual performances, then press briefings and most interviews are bull sessions, with consequences I […]
MAY DAY MEDITATION
Experiencing extreme social distancing at home on May Day, I was reminded of something I wrote as a journalist that was never published because I could not figure out how to make it topical. It was about the first American Maypole. Thomas Morton, a relocated London barrister, planted it in 1627 on a hill aboveMassachusetts Bay. […]
SMALL TOWN, FEW PEOPLE
A Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, offers a wise thought experiment for our pandemic times. Here is my literal translation of Verse 80 with updates in brackets: Little country, few people [Small mountain town, closed to tourists] Devices that can do the work of 10-100 [Power tools] Go unused [Construction […]
Politics and Potlatch
By LARRY JOSEPH CALLOWAY (C) The Wine Cave War that livened up the Democrat presidential debate a week before Christmas 2019 was timely because it was the season of giving, and the issue was gifts by wealthy people to political campaigns. News photos of the cool underground tasting room with its stone arches, crystal chandelier […]
The Word Power of Samantha
By LARRY JOSEPH CALLOWAY (C) Samantha Power’s new book, “The Education of an Idealist,” is an engaging personal memoir telling how she was formed by Ireland, acculturated by America and educated by a dangerous world. It begins with her love of her pub-dwelling father in Dublin and ends with her professional friendship with […]
Past, Present, and Faulkner
“My fellow citizens,” Abraham Lincoln said, addressing Congress in December 1863. “We cannot escape history.” The sentiment and, “The past never dies. It is not even past,” a line from William Faulkner that has been elevated by quote pickers to the status of an aphorism about the South, hummed like a soundtrack in my […]
The Unheard Hearing
Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist, was a stranger in that strange land, the United States Senate, and so her impromptu response to the two most definitive questions by the Democrats was strange. When Sen. Feinstein asked how she was sure her sexual assailant was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Ford responded: “In the same way […]
On Natural Education
By LARRY JOSEPH CALLOWAY (c) “Educated” is an ironic title for a memoir by a young woman, Tara Westover, who showed up at Brigham Young University from rural Idaho at age 17 without any education at all, not even home schooling. All she knew was the mountain where she lived and the personalities of her […]
Puma, Panther, Cougar. . . Lion!
By LARRY JOSEPH CALLOWAY (C) Mountain lions live here in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. So you’d think Ron Garcia would not be surprised to see one. He’s the longtime manager of the Baca National Wildlife Refuge five minutes from Crestone, and lions are, of course, wildlife. They are unmistakable, with adult […]
