• Music

    Brilliant Songs No. 1: Tom Russell’s
    “The Eyes of Roberto Duran”

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    So many great songs and songwriters, true poets who weave the disparate shards of life happening before their eyes into something intense, insightful, and profound as that life, every life, deserves. Seeing what we see only dimly or not at all, marching up to questions we shy from and coaxing from them words and images of beauty and inspiration or dead-on-the-money, troubling truth. So it’s time to have a little more sustained fun with all that, in the form of a series hosted here at Traversing entitled as you see in the headline slot above: “Brilliant Songs.” I’ll aim for monthly, may slack…

  • Politics/Culture

    Stormy May Bring Him Down, But Ruinous Policy Is Much Worse

    March 25, 2018 - By 

    With President Trump spending Sunday morning tweeting about the omnibus budget bill he signed Friday rather than Stormy Daniels, we can assume two things:1) 60 Minutes, Daniels and her lawyer have a convincing and verifiable story to tell, and, 2) his attorneys have been virtually sitting on him with dire warnings to refrain from digging his legal hole any deeper than it already is by attacking her in the usual slashing, hot-headed way he goes after other targets he is seeking to discredit. I don’t know what the ultimate outcome of the Daniels affair will be, though there is no particular reason…

  • Politics/Culture

    Will a Kids Crusade
    Finally Lead to Sane Gun Laws?

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    “At this point, we’ve seen the adults are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is to keep us safe. So we’re done with going to them and asking for permission. At this point we’re just going to do what we have to.” Can there be a more calmly damning, withering critique of the failure of American political institutions and the adults who run them to come to terms with the appalling gun violence in this country than that statement last week by 16-year-old Vikiana Petit-Homme, a junior at Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts? And the real goal of those advocating for stronger gun…