"To the question of whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic. I am pessimistic because I feel the full weight of what we conceive to be the absence of purpose in the course...

"In a period that ridicules as antiquated and without value whatever seems akin to rational or independent thought, and which even mocks the inalienable human rights proclaimed in the 18th century, I declare myself to be one who places all his confidence...

The movie Paterson was filmed in and about Paterson, New Jersey. In fact, the main character in the film's name is Paterson - no other name is given for him. Paterson is a bus driver in Paterson. But he's unusual in that he writes poetry, often before...

Historian Howard Zinn said that socialism thrived in the U.S. before the Bolshevik Revolution, the late 1800's and the early 1900's, showing that it was not a product of the Russians and their ideology. Leon Trotsky, he says, was not the great humanitarian...

Dostoevsky's short novel, The Eternal Husband , appears in a bound book I have along with 2 other shorts: Notes from the Underground and The Double. Most of his other works were quite a bit longer; these are some 100 to 150 pages long. The Brothers Karamozov...

The Bishop's Wife is a way older movie, 1940's or so, starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven. Set at Christmas time in New York City probably, it's the story of an angel, Grant, who rescues Young's and Niven's marriage which is on the rocks...

Bessie Smith, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1894, was an understudy of Ma Rainey, so-called "Mother of the Blues". She sang of what she saw in the deep south as an unenfranchised black woman and of what she experienced against her people. Smith came...

My first exposure to Bruce Springsteen came in the spring of 1974 while I was a senior at Swarthmore College on the west side of Philadelphia. He gave a concert in our outdoor amphitheater. That wasn't so unusual given the fact that he lived, and still...

Recently, a number of indoor shopping malls throughout the country, including Aurora Mall in the Denver area, experienced altercations among young people, probably some violent. Do they have nothing else to do? Are they unemployed? According to a Mr....

August Rush is the unusual title to a movie about the power and beauty of music. A budding classical viola artist and a raucus singer/guitar player in his own rock band meet at a party and have an intimate tryst in New York City one night. She becomes...