We’re on the record: the world needs another Christmas music collection about as much as another porno clip. We’ve got plenty. What more needs to be added, what else can be said on the subject of Christmas songs that hasn’t already been said wonderfully well by hundreds — thousands? — of others? Pianist-arranger-composer Laurence Hobgood,...
We were once under the misapprehension that Christmas was the holiday that had become commercialized and drained of meaning. After witnessing the emergence of Black Friday as a widely understood part of the lexicon, we’re inclined to think that the Thanksgiving holiday has become just as bad. Never mind that the whole Pilgrims and Indians thing...
With historic changes afoot in the coming year, we have much to look forward to. Let’s pray, my friends, that goodness is around the corner for all of us — including folks we might not know. Life may not be consistently beautiful and sublime, but it is always a blessing, and we are fortunate to...
Once, long ago, in an arid place where life was hard, harder than in the yet undiscovered precincts of what we now call the Americas, a crazy Jew started a cult. Despite the objections of the local authorities, who, like most authorities, preferred the populace to be docile and compliant, the crazy Jew spoke passionately...
An Open Letter to Councilmember Hugo Soto-MartinezDear Councilmember Soto-Martinez,
The man you replaced, Mitch O’Farrell, was perceived by many as a cynical politician who placed the desires of wealthy real-estate developers over the concerns of the people he was supposed to represent. Sensitive to any perception of impropriety, you’ve made it a point to not accept…
For more than forty years one of our favorite writers, Detroit-based Peter Werbe, has been publishing provocative essays about capitalism, technology, religion, politics, and popular culture in the anarchist journal The Fifth Estate, where he’s long been an indispensable member of the editorial collective. Some of his best work is now organized in a compulsively readable...
