Random Thoughts
San Francisco, California-1977-Bonus Post
You all had such great comments (on Facebook), perhaps the Melvin Kaminsky (yes, Mr. Brooks' real name) post deserves a follow up:It was Junior year and I was sitting in a journalism class when David Ansley came in and found me. I was in a workshop, so he wasn’t...
Griffith Park Carousel, Los Angles, California-1974
Greetings over your interweb devices “Well, she was just seventeen,You know what I mean,And the way she looked was way beyond compare” “I don’t want to be 17,” she said, “I just don’t.”It was Julie Kim’s birthday, but she wasn’t...
Overcoming The Fear Factor
ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHIEU BOUREL; PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AF ARCHIVE; ALAMY; EVERETT COLLECTION; RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE "I can't explain the Wallace phenomena. I can't explain the Nixon surge. I think partly it's a general fear- fear of the have-nots getting something; fear of...
Town Halls – Separate, and NOT Equal
I read many of your posts, my friends, concerning the battling town halls which took place tonight. The advice of most of you was to skip the session with the sitting president -- or at least watch the responses of his competition first. While I do understand your...
Re-revisiting “A Face In The Crowd”
ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHIEU BOUREL; PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AF ARCHIVE; ALAMY; EVERETT COLLECTION; RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE Very early in the rise of our sitting president's political career, I was among those who saw the parallels between this classic (and remarkably prescient)...
Be Careful What You Wish For . . .
Lots of plots over the last couple of decades have been centered on alternate universe realities — the “What If. . .?” storylines. In “The Man in the High Castle,” Hitler and the Nazis win WW II and we discover what it would have been like to live in that reality. In...
THE PRESIDENT WHO CRIED WOLF
Perhaps more alarming than the news that the sitting president, his wife, and other members of the WH staff have been exposed to and tested positive for COVID-19, is that the first response of some was not one of sympathy or well wishes for the afflicted or even...
Today’s Political Observation:
From the time of his election, the sitting president has received a lot of opposition, and protests started up immediately all around the nation. The attached picture is of student protestors taken from a New York Times article in November of 2016, just after...
Political extra
It is now convention time - and for the next two weeks, we will be inundated by pronouncements from both sides of the aisle as to the state of things and why their particular candidate should be elected.Here is the important thing to keep in the forefront of your...
Unfit at any juncture
It has been a while since I expressed a longer political view –– with 99 days to go, it is as good a time as any.A number of pundits and pollsters are reexamining the 2016 election and using it as a yardstick with which to measure the sitting president’s current...
The Scorpion/McConnell and the Frog/Turtle
Consider the fable of the scorpion and the frog — the scorpion, unable to ford a stream enlists the aid of a frog who can navigate the watery passage. When confronted with the frog’s fear that while riding safely on his back, the scorpion will sting him, he is...
Time Enough at Last
In my older and more reflective years, to paraphrase Fitzgerald, I have had occasion to meet up with young men and women who are seeking advice as to how to find work in the entertainment industry. Their goal is often to get into writing, an area in which I have never...