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...
What would happen to American democracy if our elections offered two or more excellent choices for the office, a situation in which voters aren’t forced to choose between one awful politician from one kind of political mafia and another awful politician from the other mafia? Wouldn’t that be demonstrably better than the depressingly cynical situation...
The major players of American “neo-liberalism” — which might be more accurately called “neo-corporatism” — are panicking. Thanks to their abject failure to provide “Change You Can Believe In,” their failure to stem the tide of angry right-wing extremism, and their systematic “free trade” evisceration of the middle class, the Clintons, Joe Biden, and Barack...
Anyone who lives in or visits Los Angeles can see we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands. More than 60,000 people are without homes, and the numbers grow every month. The allegedly booming economy has trickled up to the rich; meanwhile many working people experience the ravages of downward mobility. Priced out of increasingly...
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...
With elections looming this week, it seems as good a time as ever to revisit the badly misunderstood concept of Vote Wasting. The standard lie, perniciously attractive to uncritical thinkers, is: When you vote for someone who “can’t win,” someone from, say, the Green Party, you’re wasting your vote. Therefore, the flawed reasoning goes, one should...
Vista, the little Sunset Square “capillary” street we live on, runs North-South between two major “artery” boulevards, Hollywood and Sunset. Because there’s a school at the end of our block, diverting traffic around the block to the East or West, Vista Street is inconvenient for those in a hurry. Most drivers take a more direct route, one that...
Earl Flowers can read. He can read this sentence. He can read every word on this page. If he doesn’t immediately recognize one of the words, he can sound it out phonetically – or, if it’s completely unfamiliar, he knows how to use a dictionary to teach himself. When Earl reads out loud – when...
We were teenagers. We lived in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee. We knew nothing. But we felt deeply about everything. We were angry, confused, disgusted, frightened, and yet somehow hopeful. We were also blissfully unaware that three kids from Wisconsin could make music that would continue to mean something to listeners more than three decades...
Just around the corner, a couple of blocks from our idyllic, tree-lined street, a homeless encampment has taken root on the sidewalk beside a utility building owned by AT&T. Nylon tents, food refuse, unwashed people — it’s an unlovely sight in an otherwise lovely neighborhood. Many of the wealthy homeowners in the area have taken...
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…
Does righteousness have a sound? Can good intentions be heard in the language of music? Saxophonist/composer Dan Blake’s new recording, Da Fe, attempts an aural answer to those questions, and the results are convincing. A Buddhist, social justice warrior, and former member of the Esperanza Spalding band, Blake’s values are deeply humanist and compassionate; on the...
