Intention and Want

Intention and want are undervalued, yet powerful, acts of
character
that define people in their place.  Both actor and audience must have clear wants and intentions to perform and follow — or the dramatic tension will collapse.

Continue reading → Intention and Want

Ten Forty-Seven

Cogent crimes of the mind become deceptions of the heart.

Ten Twenty

Evelyn turned twenty, missed her teens, and the subtracting began.

Saluting the Muslim American Solider

Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday and he made an eloquent defense for Barack Obama as president while resoundingly defeating the cruel, and unfounded, attacks by the radical right wing that Obama is as Muslim when he is not; but, Powell argued, what if Obama were a Muslim?  What difference would it make?  What difference should it make?  Then General Powell mentioned an arresting image he saw in the New Yorker showing Elsheba Khan resting her head on the grave of her dead Muslim American son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. Powell told us Special Khan fought for America and his sacrifice was no less than that of any Christian.

Continue reading → Saluting the Muslim American Solider

The Peril of a Mechanical Pencil

The modern world made a sea change when the wood pencil was replaced by a mechanical one — and what was lost in that industrial design exchange was our tether to the land, a sense of impermanence, and a shared yearning for renewable resources.

Continue reading → The Peril of a Mechanical Pencil

Chasing a Receding Horizon

It is human nature to press ahead and chase what we can never catch.  For all of human existence we have been obsessed with the horizon and what riches and wonders wait for us just beyond the ken of its bend.

Continue reading → Chasing a Receding Horizon

Spitzer’s Hooker Scandal: The Governor’s Girl Revealed

We now have a face for “Kristin” — Ashley Youmans (aka Ashley Alexandra Dupré), a 22-year-old, fresh-faced, New Jersey nymph — to go with our Spitzer Hooker Scandal.

Continue reading → Spitzer’s Hooker Scandal: The Governor’s Girl Revealed