The righteous social justice publisher, Wising Up Press, from Decatur, Georgia, has released their latest anthology, this one simply called Goodness. Several dozen writers grapple with the concept, sharing poems, short stories, essays, and many affecting memoirs, all manifesting a sense, a feeling, of something we all recognize and yearn for but often cannot define....
This past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has renewed our belief in the...
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension…is itself a frightful despotism [serving] always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot...
Runyon Canyon Park, a unique wilderness area in the heart of Hollywood, is currently under threat. Expensive studies have been commissioned, catastrophic problems identified, and Strategic Plans (many of them wildly expensive) formulated. The standard narrative promulgated by those with political and financial interests: Runyon Canyon is being “loved to death.” It’s crumbling from too...
Franklin Canyon Park, in the storied borough of Beverly Hills, has been used as a popular filming location for decades. Exterior shots for The Andy Griffith Show, Twin Peaks, On Golden Pond, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Happened One Night — all were photographed here. These days, about 25 movies are filmed in Franklin Canyon annually. Producers...
When we consider regions of the world less “developed” than ours, let’s keep in mind Europe (and its imperialist offspring around the globe, like the United States) were also once Medieval. We, too, were once benighted, ignorant, backwards. Long ago, our civilization preferred the mystical powers of alchemy to the rational comforts of science, the...
As in any ideological system, young chess players are inculcated with seemingly inviolable commandments: Thou Shalt Arrange Your Pieces to Control the Center, Thou Shall Not Move the Same Piece Twice Until All Other Pieces Are Developed. In what you might call the romantic era of chess, before the development of artificial intelligence, these commandments...
At the World Championship Match, in Helsinki, Finland, they reached a complicated position where The Champion intended on sacrificing a knight. The giveaway was not an obvious tactic; with all the minor pieces still on the board, the position offered a large number of possible variations, all of them leading to interesting circumstances, but nothing...
Ask anyone under the age of 35: it’s all good. You accidentally bump your shopping cart into someone standing in line at the supermarket: Oops! No worries. It’s all good. You show up a few minutes late for a scheduled appointment: No problem, it’s all good. You forget someone’s name for the third time: Whatever....
Every person with an email inbox and an enthusiastic mother has seen the video by now. No doubt your mom sent it to you, subject line: This Is SOOOO Inspiring!!! Thanks to mothers like ours, it didn’t take long for the clip, a five-minute segment from “America’s Got Talent,” to go viral, amassing more than...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Used traditionally, in most Western music the bass keeps time churning out fat quarter-notes based on the root of a chord. Ba-dum-dum-dum-dum. On his addictive new recording Tines of Change, the visionary master bassist and composer explores his instrument’s under-utilized sonic possibilities. The concatenation of squeaks, grumbles, twitters, growls, whistles, knocks, cries, howls, and, yes, nice...
