June 2012

Eating Poetry (XXXVI) – San Zeno

June 30, 2012

. Zen time. Zen place. by Zach Finch Related articles “The Don Draper of Existentialism” (sadredearth.com) Language Is So Unstable, You Don’t Even Know What I’m Talking About (Do You) (sadredearth.com) How We Lived On It (51) – Route 66: The American Road (sadredearth.com) Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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Massacre of the Cheyenne

June 27, 2012

. The story I mean to relate is for tomorrow. This is another story. This one needs to be told first, as Joe Starita tells it first, for context, in his I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice. Standing Bear’s story is of the Ponca tribe. This story is of the Cheyenne. [...]

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Pride of a Partisan

June 26, 2012

. As much as some people might be apt to choke on the mere thought of it, ahead of the very thing itself, the central node of American political tendencies was to be found this past Friday, June 23, 2012 in a studio at Television City, in California, on Bill Maher’s Real Time. What? you [...]

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Ethnic Cleansing in the United States, Historic & Contemporary

June 25, 2012

. I tried to keep up with posting while in Nebraska last week, but then the pace of the workshop – the NEH Legacies and Landmarks of the Plains Native Americans, conceived and hosted by Central Community College – was fourteen-hours-a-day relentless, with lots of travel and a couple of times, by night, I confess, [...]

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Six Pawnee Scouts: a Homecoming

June 21, 2012

. The history of Indigenous-European relations in North America is sometimes simultaneously complex and simple. We find complexity in the clash of cultures and world views and the intersecting cultures, including among the Indigenous tribes themselves. Simple, too often, was the sheer racist betrayal and barbarism. Pawnee were shrewd and fierce warriors, often in conflict [...]

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A Lost Covenant

June 19, 2012

. Among all the Native tribes of North America to whom sacred bundles were part of their spiritual tradition, there was none to whom the bundles and the ceremonial prayers that accompanied them were more central than the Pawnee. According to the Kansas Historical Society, Sacred bundles were a powerful part of Pawnee ceremonies linked to planting and [...]

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National Security Leak

June 18, 2012

. Something is leaking. I’m sorry, that’s someone. Or ones. About the U.S.’s continuing drone campaign against Al-Qeada and our ongoing cyber warfare against Iranian nuclear capabilities. A fascinating fissure in the negative reaction to the inside dope is its left-right nature. At the farther left reaches, President Obama is decried as no more than [...]

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Fathers and Sons

June 17, 2012

. A grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharg’d.                    Jobn Milton                   Paradise Lost Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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Mourning In America

June 15, 2012

. A nation doesn’t lose its freedoms in foreign lands. It loses them at home. Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not diminish American democracy. Neither will drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. The GOP is doing that under our noses every day, right now, in cities and the states, in the congress of [...]

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Thomas Jefferson, Architect of Deception

June 13, 2012

. I head in a few days to Columbus, Nebraska for an NEH workshop on the Legacies and Landmarks of the Plains Native Americans. One of the books I’m reading in preparation is “I Am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice, by Joe Starita. Standing Bear was a Ponca Indian chief whose efforts to return his [...]

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Discussing Drones: the Right Way, the Greenwald Way

June 11, 2012

. Last week, in response to “Glenn Greenwald’s Mitt Romney Surrogacy,” a commenter defended Greenwald by describing his work as “independent non-partisan scholarship.” Not that very long after the laughter faded, I read at the Boston ReviewDavid Luban’s “What Would Augustine Do? The President, Drones, and Just War Theory.” If you don’t have the time [...]

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How We Lived On It (52) – Harlem Blues

June 9, 2012

. The vocal by Cynda Williams, the alternate “Acapulco version” of “Harlem Blues,” from Spike Lee‘s Mo’ Better Blues. Original music by the Branford Marsalis Quartet and Terence Blanchard. This version substitutes strings. Video by MultiplicityMe2. Related articles 2012 Detroit Jazz Festival Announces Star-Studded Lineup (theurbanflux.com) Branford Marsalis goes green, finds his roots (mnn.com) Share Tweet [...]

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Glenn Greenwald’s Mitt Romney Surrogacy

June 7, 2012

. I might just as well have titled this Glenn Greenwald’s Collateral Damage, The Politics of Animus, or the Politics of National Destruction or the Puritopian’s Dilemma – the list goes on. Here’s a list that goes on longer, among Glenn Greenwald’s last eighteen blog posts: Probing Obama’s secrecy games; U.S. again bombs mourners; Tough [...]

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The “Peace and Justice” Charade

June 5, 2012

(Cross-posted at The Times of Israel) We have it from Aesop that “a doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.” Let there be no doubt, then, for Israel, and for those who would, in whatever words, pretend [...]

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How We Lived On It (51) – Route 66: The American Road

June 2, 2012

. The New York Times reported the other day, while talking with series co-star George Maharis (along with Martin Milner), that the complete four season series of Route 66, the iconic television show of the early 1960s is now available on DVD from the Shout! Factory. Post Kerouac’s On the Road, pre Ken Kesey’s Magic [...]

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Threats to Democracy

June 1, 2012

. The New York Times editorialized the other day, in “Too Much Power for a President,” It has been clear for years that the Obama administration believes the shadow war on terrorism gives it the power to choose targets for assassination, including Americans, without any oversight. The Times argued, No one in that position should be able [...]

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