Top posts
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Rocky Balboa Was a Wuss
Actually, of course, he wasn't. I just wanted to get your attention. He probably could have knocked my block off with both hands tied behind his back! Go ahead and read my latest entry below about boxing movies, inspired by Southpaw, Rocky, Cinderella...
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Ernesto Che Guevara
Fidel Castro just passed away this month; Che Guevara was his loyal friend and fellow revolutionary. Che, an Argentinian, became a medical doctor, but after travelling through Latin America and seeing the dire poverty and blatant political oppression,...
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What I write and Why
I was asked about the above, so here goes... My blog, entitled "A Look at the World," is intended to give my perspectives on the world from religion, with a cultural, political and historical flavor; politics, as illuminated by history, in the mold of...
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Life Adrift
Well, I finished Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, but I was wrong. The old man didn't die in a storm at sea, he made it back to his house in Cuba. There was no bitter-sweet tragedy like I predicted. But I think the ending was tragic, in a different...
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Steinbeck's Pearl
John Steinbeck wrote The Pearl about a Mexican pearl diver who finds the largest pearl anyone in his village has seen. But instead of making him and his wife happy, it only brings misery. It's a story of greed and murder, all to get riches. While Kino,...
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Albert Camus - Again! - Rebellion and Absurdism
Albert Camus was born and raised in Algeria but as a French citizen. After a difficult childhood, he attended University and became one of France's premier philosophers. Camus joined the Communist Party but eventually became turned off by some of the...
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More Camus
In The Stranger, Camus tells the story of a man who is really pretty undirected, who just seems to react to people and events around him. He finds, and sleeps with, a girlfriend who soon enough wants him to marry her. He tells her, why not? Does he love...
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A Day of Infamy
Today, December 7, 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese surprise bombing of the U.S. fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the subsequent entry of the U.S. into World War II. Franklin Roosevelt said that it was a day that would "live...
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the above novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Set in the fictional town of Macondo, somewhere in South or Central America, it's a bad combination of possible reality and unbelievable fantasy. I think Garcia Marquez wanted...
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The Use(s) of History
The Use(s) of History Boston University radical historian (now deceased) Howard Zinn was a foremost proponent of using history as more than to just record the past. He believed that an historian needs to write history "on behalf of the goals in which...
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WOODSTOCK
I have a copy of the original Woodstock movie filmed live at the 1969 New York 3- day festival. Billed as 3 days of peace and music, it certainly fulfills that label. But "where have all the flowers gone"? I think, coming 24 years after the end of WWII,...
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Dialogue
The president of my college gave a talk here in Denver yesterday. She was quick to point out and emphasize that while many in the U.S. now are fostering political division, at Swarthmore College the students, faculty and staff are invested in dialoguing...
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Minneapolis Police Department
Referring again to the Dec., 2016 Catholic Worker's edition of their newspaper: there's an article about Black Lives Matter and some connection that some Catholic worker folks have had in connection with that movement. While historically the Catholic...
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Hemingway Strikes Again
I just finished 2 Hemingway novels, Men Without Women and Winner Take All. Both are collections of short stories written early on, probably in the 1920's and 30's. I actually didn't read them, I listened on audio book cd in my car. Both were narrated...
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Changing?
Someone at the Rec Ctr today said to me, "Times are changing..." Instantly, I thought of Bob Dylan's song words, "The times they are a-changing". Bob recently got his picture on the cover of..... the AARP magazine!, a far cry from the cover of the Rolling...
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Philosophically Speaking...
A friend sent me 2 pictures on Facebook: pictures of his lilac bushes this year and last year here in Denver on Mother's Day. Both pix showed the bushes drooping and loaded with wet snow, ready to break. This is Mother's Day remember. His caption was...
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I am an honorary capitalist, per the Wall ST. JOURNAL
~~Mr. Hochschild is greatly in error regarding President Obama’s idea of extending bankruptcy options for all student-loan borrowers. The nation needs to invest in the future of youth by ensuring lower-cost college education to all qualified individuals....
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Joe Hill
Joe was a radical, song-writing union organizer for the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). He was executed Nov. 19, 1915, 100 yrs. ago this Nov. by the State of Utah. Most believe he was framed for the murder of a storekeeper and his son. The state...
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Swats
Am right now visiting my old college alma mater, Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa. After 39 yrs., things look amazingly different. But then, why shouldn't they? Even people look incredibly different after that period of time. I do too. Anyway, the...
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You Can't Go Home Again
No, you can't, according to the play "Our Town", but you can sure visit. I'm now back from my alumni reunion @ Swarthmore College. When you step back into your past for a couple days like that... lots of emotions, memories and thoughts come rushing in....
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LaGuardia
Actually, googling his name yesterday, I found that someone had researched the story I told previously re: above mayor of NYC. This person claims that LaGuardia gave his hatful of money to a little old lady who stole the bread for her grandkids! Even...
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Far From the Madding Crowd
Saw the movie this week... thought it was good. Based on Thomas Hardy's novel of many yrs. ago. Main character "Bathsheba" was of course an independent woman of sorts for her time. The Brits, novel as they are, pronounced her name BATH-sheba, accent on...
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The Last Picture Show
Last night I saw the above movie from 1971 made by Peter Bogdanovich... at the old-time movie festival at the Mayan theater. Almost walked out on it, until I remembered what the host said about it at the beginning: it was a movie about people in a small...
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Fire in My... (Lead) Belly
Lead Belly! I for some reason have been running into this dude so much lately. Maybe because some of his songs are coming out courtesy of the Museum in Wash. DC. I first encountered him, or better said, his name, on the back of Led Zeppelin's 3rd album,...
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Cuba Libre
Now that the U.S. and Cuba want to restore diplomatic relations, the descendants of the Cuban elite in this country who fled Castro's revolution are up in arms. One would suspect, looking at who fled, that they were the Batista-sympathizers with money...