Did you know that there’s a “Congressional Baking Caucus?” Two members, a Republican from Pennsylvania and a Democrat from North Carolina. Both male, in case you were wondering, projecting a vision of getting together now and again to advance the cause of bi-partisan scone-baking across our great land. There’s also a “Congressional Bourbon Caucus,” a “Congressional Bus Caucus,” a “Congressional Caucus on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Technologies,” a “Bipartisan Ski and Snowboard Caucus” (think Colorado, Utah and California!), a “Congressional Algae Caucus,” a “Congressional Ferry Caucus” (what, no equal time for a “Fairy Caucus?”), a “Congressional Chicken Caucus” (I’m…
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“Neruda, Reyes, Paz; Washington, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Paris, Geneva; Cervantes, Balzac, Rimbaud, Thomas Mann: only with all the shared languages, those of my places and friends and masters, was I able to approach the fire of literature and ask it for a few sparks.” So goes the conclusion of the lead essay by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) in his 1988 collection, “Myself With Others.” That summary of places and names in “How I Started to Write” reflects but some of the currents that coursed always warm-bloodedly through Fuentes’s ever-restless intellectual life and the works…
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(First, a note on language. I use the term “beggar” in this post, rather than the more modern and commonly used “panhandler,” with specific intention. “Panhandler” is regarded as more value-neutral than “beggar,” which supposedly carries with it a degree of moralism and judgment. In my view, however, “panhandler” minimizes and thus devalues the actual desperation of these people who live in such drastically reduced circumstances, which calls out for a fully human response not reflected in a word that more suggests a job title than it does the pathos we all know is the actual case. I feel the…
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After a couple of years of what has felt like an extraordinary period of loss, I’ve come to realize, in that forehead-slapping “Duh!!! kind of way signifying I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, that there’s nothing “extraordinary” at all about people dying with regularity at my age, all through my family and friendship circle. It’s just the way of things, a pure math and probability issue, that a certain percentage of people die at rates that increase with each decade. Just a few tragic unfortunates suffer their demise in the early decades, but the trend line goes steadily…
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On January 13, 2019, nearly 10 months before what would become the first violent attempt in American history to overthrow the results of a presidential election with the full blessing of the incumbent president who refused to accept his defeat, I wrote in this space the following while awaiting the outcome of the Robert Mueller investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election: “So what will they do, these Republicans, if Mr. Mueller presents conclusive evidence…that the president of the United States willfully and repeatedly sought the assistance of and, in return, provided succor to, a longtime nemesis of his…