Friday, August 5, 2005
FURY in The Big Apple
Hello from New York, to my faithful and not so faithful readers-- Actually, FURY is a huge, bold headline in the New York Post, one of the many, many newspapers available in the New York area. The sub-line is: "Jewish Terror Fiend Killed in Mob Justice." The story is about a 19 year-old Israeli army...
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Friday, July 29, 2005
Don't Cry For Me Just Because I'm leaving
Yep, I am leaving next week for New York to visit my 78 year-old first cousin whom I have not seen since I was five years old and she was twenty. She also has a fifty-four year-old daughter. So how old does that make me? Beverly and Linda are the last two living relatives that I know of on my...
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Friday, July 22, 2005
Fear of Writing CLIMAX. Read This or All is Lost!
Someone here said that alcohol dependency could interfere with a writer's clarity, and quoted Stephen King (lots of clarity there). Actually, being a "blocked" writer is akin to alcohol or drug dependency, and yet many great writers of the past (and present, I suppose) had alcohol or drug...
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
The Dreaded Writing Dream Continues. Don't be Afraid!
The lizard doctor assured me, “That bank deposit is there for you any time you are ready to receive it.” He flashed me a non-threatening reptilian smile. But I was feeling that the one who made that deposit, was not really me. I worried myself to sleep at night and had frightening dreams, like being...
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Is Your Writing Dream a Nightmare?
A voice was calling from the depths of the writing dream, trying to get my attention. I think it was a reassuring voice, but I couldn’t be sure. I had gone upstairs to the special computer that could contact anyone in the world, in a determined mood. I had a passion for the task, yet I became...
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Try to Interpret This Dream About Writing
Dreams reveal information and aspirations that are not accessible to us when we are awake. Sometimes a dream can say more about who we are and what we can be, much better than any affirmations or self-help books. What follows is a fictionalized dream about writing: We are a company of people who...
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Saturday, July 16, 2005
Join me for another language adventure
Sometimes I fall into the G.B. Shaw practice of quoting myself. For example, “Finding opportunity is preferable to avoiding tedium.” In my dictionary, tedium is the quality of being boring or monotonous, but its root means “it disgusts or offends.” I can see where monotony could be offensive—maybe...
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Friday, July 15, 2005
Bloggers: Let's have some fun with language!
The weather report says we are “threatened” by rain. Since I enjoy rain, I’ve never considered it dangerous or menacing, which is the definition of threat. Tornadoes are a threat. Hurricanes are a threat. Too much rain might cause floods or mudslides, but rain itself does not threaten. Rain is a...
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Politics and Religion
In the late 1970s I was a graduate student and then a research associate at the University of Washington. An article I wrote about the Cuban Revolution was published in the Seattle POST-INTELLIGENCER. Among comments I received was a letter from a man who nicely represented the thought processes of...
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Sunday, July 10, 2005
Why do The Nations so Furiously Rage Together?
Recently I ventured onto the battlefield where religious knights and their secular enemies duke it out. To many it is holy ground, electric with energy, where great banners of color more impressive than the aurora borealis fill the sky, and sacred battles are fought to determine the course of...
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Friday, July 8, 2005
Painter and Kooka Should not coerce Christians to answer Loaded Questions
Empty-handed painter and Kooka have challenged the faithful believers among us to answer questions based in reason. Who would have expected me to defend their right not to answer? I think that believers in true charity can suffer attacks upon their faith without reaction. Perhaps that’s what is...
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Friday, June 17, 2005
A Strange Connection: Strom Thurmond and Andrea Dworkin--Part Two
"The known, tried-and-true principles of reality universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, are often shaped out of profound ignorance. We do not know what or how much we do not know. Ignoring our ignorance, even though it has been revealed to us time and time again, we believe that...
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Wednesday, June 15, 2005
A Strange Relationship
"The First Amendment was designed to protect white, land-owning men from the power of the state. This was followed by the Second Amendment, which says, "...and we have guns. Women and most blacks were chattel, without any speech rights of any kind. So the First Amendment protects the speech of...
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Sunday, June 12, 2005
"Conservatives", "Liberals" and "Christians"
A few days ago I came across a post by Fr.Patrick Reardon on the Touchstone Blog. It was criticism of an essay by Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff that must have ventured a little too far to the left for Fr. Reardon's comfort and also that of James Kushiner, who had critiqued it earlier. The subject was "How...
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Thursday, June 9, 2005
Nothing to say
The flames are lit, the coffee is poured. I watched an old movie about deadly spores. The writing practice sessions pile up and alligator tails erupt from teeth and jaws and shrouded souls that would be characters if they could find themselves. But they live in cities I have explored only in dreams....
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