Top posts
-
An article I will submit to the Industrial Worker
ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE "Civil Disobedience" was a treatise written by Henry David Thoreau over 150 years ago. It's been quoted and cited hundreds of times since by non-violent "revolutionaries" and those wishing to draw attention to unjust laws by their...
-
The Man Who Knew Infinity
I saw the above movie yesterday. It had sounded interesting because the summary said it was about a mathematician from India who went to Cambridge University in England and was pretty sensational. That was a good nutshell synopsis. His last name was Ramanujen....
-
Natives and Nativism
The term Nativism has been bandied about recently, thanks to Donald Trump and his desire to arouse animosity among American citizens. Nativism is just that - the belief that native (Americans in this case) are better than immigrants, belong here more...
-
Quakers and Non-Violence
Staughton Lynd and his wife Alice Lynd edited a book called "Non-Violence in America - A Documentary History" which I picked up recently. Staughton was a history professor at Yale. After his adamant opposition to the Viet Nam war in the 1960's, Yale dismissed...
-
It's a Jungle Out There...
I saw "Jungle Book", the movie based on the story by Rudyard Kipling. The boy Mowgli is the only non-computer enhanced character in the movie. Of course, the visuals were amazing. What struck me was that a movie can now be made totally in a studio and...
-
Quaker Meeting House
I was privileged today to attend the Swarthmore Quaker Meeting here on campus. While a student, I think I only attended it once or twice. But this time, after visiting the Swarthmore Peace Collection here in the library and seeing pictures of early Quaker...
-
Walter Plywaski
Walter was born in 1930 in Poland. He is Jewish and lives now in Golden, Co. NPR did an interview this past year with Mr. Plywaski in which he described his time spent in a Jewish ghetto and then numerous concentration camps throughout Poland starting...
-
A Footnote to the Hallowell Brothers
Just to add an interesting fact or two to the prior blog on Ned and Pen Hallowell I gleaned by checking Wikipedia... Pen Hallowell was an intimate friend of supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Both fought together in the Civil War, and both...
-
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...
-
Blade Runner Only Walks
I watched the movie Blade Runner with Harrison Ford (the only name actor in it) yesterday and I was mostly disappointed. The idea was mildly fascinating, but poorly developed. For example, the year it is supposed to take place in is 2019, only 3 years...
-
Elliot
First of all, thanks to all who have been, are and will be, reading my blog posts. Overblog has a Stats page where I can see daily how many unique visitors have checked my blog, how many pages total were read, and which pages have been most popular. There...
-
Round the Corner
Just a couple of blocks from me is the Sawa Market, a Polish store owned and operated by Poles. They sell fresh and cooked kielbasa, pierogis, kishka, pickled beets, hard salami, and numerous brands of sauerkraut. Much of this is directly imported from...
-
Sojourner Truth
Right now I'm at my alma mater - Swarthmore College - near Philadelphia, PA using a computer in the library. Not more than 50 yards from me is a brown, hardwood bench brought here from Longwood Quaker Meetinghouse, around 18 miles from Swarthmore. The...
-
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...
-
The Age of the Demogogues
The Depression of the 1930's gave rise to lots of kooky ideas... and lots of kooks, too! Greatest among these was Huey Long of Louisiana, aided by an even greater orator, Gerald L.K. Smith. Long managed to turn the politics and politicians of Louisiana...
-
2001 - A Space Odyssey
I viewed the movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey" again recently, after seeing it the first time some 50 years ago when it came out. It became the template for all ensuing sci-fi space movies, like "Star Wars", to follow. It's hard to interpret. A rectangular,...
-
Very Cool Runnings
I watched the 1980's comedy Cool Runnings again. I wanted to laugh. And John Candy and the four Jamaican (bobsled) actors didn't disappoint me. It really is good to get some belly laughs. For hysterical laughter I also like to check in weekly to NPR's...
-
George Norris
George Norris was a U.S. senator and politician from Nebraska during the 1st quarter of the 20th century. He was a progressive Republican, an animal which is quite scarce these days, almost extinct! The closest approximation might be Olympia Snowe, senator...
-
Hemingway - Again
I picked up a copy of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and am about 3/4 finished with it. Hemingway is one author that I and many other people over the years have found captivating. I never wanted to read Old Man before as I thought it wouldn't be...
-
Quit Babeling On...
I read an article recently that said within some ten years our translating technology may be so developed that we will be able to use a hand-held device with a program that will translate any language instantly for us. In other words, with say a cell...
-
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...
-
Doubters - movers and shakers
Yesterday I attended a group of neat folks. They termed the group: doubters. Some were atheists, some Christians, others... I don't know. But they all said what they wanted in a safe atmosphere and everyone listened respectively. The topic: The paranormal,...
-
Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Yugo was a Spanish linguist and philosopher who died in 1936, at the very beginning of the Spanish Civil War. He was a prolific essayist, novelist and poet, as well as rector of the Universidad de Salamanca not far from Madrid. His...
-
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...
-
Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?
People have told me that you either like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, usually never both. I suppose that's true in my case. I like Dostoevsky and not the other one. But, you know, all the Russian novelists are verbose and like to have dozens of characters in...