This Place: 150 Years Retold, foreward by Alicia Elliott. In keeping with my posts about political graphic nonfiction, here is a quote from This Place. The book is an anthology…
During the current focus on systemic racism, this is likely the best essay I’ve read. It’s written in a US context, but it applies to Canada, both for Indigenous people…
We activists like to paraphrase the legendary labour activist Joe Hill by saying “First mourn, then organize”. Larry Kramer, who died yesterday at the age of 84, defined the phrase.…
Thinking about questions of human society and what is “civilized” or “civilization” makes me realize again how much I agree with Chomsky, Gandhi and Thoreau. They have all been deeply…
Civilization? Technology does not define it. Morality does. That makes all empires uncivilized, because they are based in conquest, plunder, mass murder and theft. Amazing… Scholars still talking about…
I love a good mystery. Who were the Goths? Where did they come from? How did they manage to sack Rome and defeat the most powerful empire the world…
I read Little House on the Prairie when I was very young, and eventually went on to read the whole Little House series. I didn’t know any other girls named…
“The Goths remained on Roman land and would ally themselves with the Roman army. Later, however, one man, a Goth and former Roman commander, rose up against Rome – a…
Europe did not respond well to the biggest plague in its history, in 1347-1351, to put it mildly – with anti-semitism, pogroms, scapegoating, witch trials, burning heretics at the stake,…
20,000 children die a day of hunger, and nobody notices, nobody makes a peep: outcry is basically zero. But a new strain of the flu (statistically less dangerous than…
This morning when I got up, feeling exhausted again from the on-going 30-year stint of sleeplessness and insomnia, I thought, I should take a day off – considering I pretty…
It does not require a majority to defeat tyranny and defend liberty, but only a small and dedicated minority – as we saw in the American and French Revolutions,…
I generally am not one for nostalgia, having a strong preference for living in the present, and looking to the future. Further, I rarely write in conversational colloquialisms. But I…
Continuing the series, started here. I’ve decided not to review these books, but instead to post a cover image and a quote. It was difficult to choose quotes for these…
Important, extremely useful books here. A brain washing, in the sense of clearing away the fog and gaining some clarity and perspective, is critically needed, now more than ever. What…
Protests continued: Over 2,000 people attended an event formed by San Franciscans called themselves 'THE ANTI-MASK LEAGUE,' denouncing the mandatory masking ordinance The gathering was of "public spirited citizens, skeptical…
Gender, Hierarchy, Civilization & Collapse: A Few Thoughts
What did Sumeria ever do for us? Invented writing, our concepts of time, irrigation, cities, created the first literature…little stuff like that. Sumeria predates ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and…