Beginning in the relative hopefulness of Spring of 2024, I began a series of brief essays on the the general state of American affairs, because I thought it better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. As futile as it may be to curse the darkness, it also is dangerous to light candles in a land overcome by flatulence.
With a majority of Americans unable to read at an 8th grade level, it is unlikely that a cure for what ails America will take the form of a poem or essay, especially as the current regime looks determined to prove the sword to be mightier than the pen.
- Big Lies Make Big Losers
- The Civil War and MAGA are losers
- Heed Moby-Dick, or Perish
- Why reading is fundamental
- Repeal the National Security Act of 1947
- But first Dump America’s C.E.O.
- The poaching of Strom Thurmond
- Revisiting the switcheroo of 1964
- An Error of Remedial Education
- Revisiting the 1619 Project
- Handwriting Trumps Typing
- Why devalue handwriting in public school?
- Even with no vote, corporations control elections
- Are Republicans anti-republican?
- Words are neither wright, write, right, left, or wrong
- In a republic, both kings and queens are make-believe.
- Originalist Sin
- Can America liberate herself from sophistry?
- Tricky Dick and the Long Con
- What Made America Grifter Accessible?
- Ensign Bonespur and the Barbaric Pirates
- Are American military personnel unjustly imperiled by Trump?
- American Poster Party
- He has the Gilded Oval, We have the numbers
- Poetry Belongs to The People
- Can you imagine a national bookclub today?
- Muzzle and Leash for Arthur Sze?
- Politics poisons poetry
- Empower People, Enslave Gold
- Money and democracy are tools, not ways of life
- Dethrone Drag Kings
- The Puritan Exodus was a Pilgrimage to Liberty
- After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
- Has Tanglewood heard James Taylor’s swan song?
- AI cannot make a poem
- Could POTUS have been trained to be honest?
- MAGA 1 – Truth 0
- Is truth the first casualty of war?
- Of Kings and Queens
- Why doesn’t the DNC assail Trumpian tyranny?
- Yo Poet, Drop Out!
- Is the Creative Writing Industry corrupt?
- Politics and Mister Potato Head
- Why make children fend for themselves?
- Children of Divorce
- or, Nattering Nabobs and Elegiac Hillbillies
- Pittsfield to Lenox by kayak on the Housatonic River
- “There’s no tonic like the Housatonic”
- What to read, and why
- How to outsmart FOX
- MAGArian liberation movement
- Is one free if unable to discern half-truths and whole lies?
- Bernie & AOC & Liz & Adam
- We need to hear what happened to Liz and Adam
- “I’m not gonna lie to you…”
- They Don’t Care, The New Americans
- Waldo’s Reply
- The tropical route to perdition
- Cons and pros
- Who is pro cons in the People’s House?
- Fake kings are old news
- Is it time for renewal, or surrender?
- The inescapable binary of humanity
- Wither the demons of our first civil war?
- Postcard from the Edge of Night
- At what cost do we listen and watch, rather than read?
- Forget H1-B, we all need Visas
- Behold the America of 1850
- Revelation versus science
- What does Speaker Johnson truly covet?
- Pox Americana
- What mandate remains for either party?
- About-face
- Can Americans still be counted on do the right thing?
- Why is it so easy to bury adults in lies?
- Necessary in children, obedience can be ruinous in adults
- Fanny Kemble, Berkshires first literary refugee
- From Sedgwick guest to Lenox homeowner
- Completely Unknown
- Songs and poems are different things
- Characteristics of poetry and prose
- As they may be found in my written matter
- Theology in Emerson and Melville
- In re: Daniel Webster and Queequeg
- Wobbly rests the hat of authority
- Reading teaches reason the way watching teaches following
- Q Anon for Elites
- Say it ain’t so – Gaslighting in The Atlantic?
- Theory of Conspiracy
- They do what with babies?
- “I’m not gonna lie to you …”
- When did they cancel “good, better, best, never let it rest…” ?
- Paradise Lost, Reality Won
- Has reality TV swallowed us whole?
- Hope for better treatment than Roy Cohn got
- Do we believe what we want to believe, or what we can prove to be true?
- The duplicity of David Brooks
- Has The Atlantic sold her soul to the devil of click-bait?
- Spawn of Jim Crow v. Abraham Lincoln’s Ghost
- Has the GOP’s southern strategy done US in?
- Christianity, like liberty, is indivisible
- Histroy will not be silenced
- Who dunnit?
- It takes two parties to un-do a republic
- Is Paid News the New Frankenstein?
- Coming soon on The Apprentice.
- The MetaTerranean River
- Who has jurisdiction over poetry?
- Surfing the Avalanche
- Musk and Trump careen downhill
- In the land Lincoln loved to death
- Who will you settle for?
- Artificial ain’t fake, but a. i. is dumb
- Where’s the soul?
- Air mail from Paris
- Families and friends who read together, stay together.
- “There She Is, …”
- Who does Heather Cox Richardson imagine herself to be?
- Broke News, Reagan Trumped Lincoln
- Do we really prefer Ronald Reagan to Abraham Lincoln?
- Hang Out, or Stand Up?
- Consign history to the dust heap of history?
- BREAKING NEWS!
- God and the Devil issue first joint press release
- Is half true close enough?
- Beware of spike-strips on the information superhighway
- King For a Day
- Trust me, let me be dictator on Day 1
- Where’s Waldo?
- “…it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul”
- The Big Illegal
- 34 felony convictions is a good start…
- Let A.I. stand for American Insanity
- Which device is the best fit for your mind?
- Questions for All of U.S.
- Where’s the Red Line around children at school?
- Dear Madame Vice President
- Know me by name, not by dermatology
- Pop Media is Dope
- Can you go a week without streaming?
- Half Truths Equal Whole Lies
- What qualifies as ‘prey’ in the mind of a predator?
- Return to the plantation mentality?
- Will anybody obey, this time?
- Oh Sister, Who Art Thou?
- The only generation is generation Me
- Are Your Eyes on the Prize?
- If we don’t allow drunks to drive cars, why do we allow despots to drive political campaigns?