Upcoming Events:
Thursday, 20 March, 9 am
Interview with Phil Nee, live on the WRCO morning show, Richland Center, Wis.
Thursday, 20 March, 5-7 pm
Tomah Chamber of Commerce Author Showcase, Three Bears Resort, 701 Yogi Circle, Tomah, Wis.
Thursday, 24 Apr., 6 pm
Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Waterloo Public Library, 625 N. Monroe St., Waterloo, Wis.
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The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin “By word and deed, Trump treats Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as his only real peers. Our allies, by contrast, are our subordinates. It’s as if Putin, Xi and Trump were feudal lords and each were entitled to his own feudal domain.” —David French, NY Times, 23 March MADISON, Wis.—Writing in 1948,…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I learned how to read the distance of a flyball from the crack of the bat over the radio and the tone of Earl Gillespie’s response (he never, ever hyped a warning-track quail as a dinger).” —David Benjamin, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked MADISON, Wis.—It wasn’t an every…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” —Vince Lombardi MADISON, Wis.—Right around the time he applies his Sharpie to an edict changing the name of Canada to Trumpanada and sending the North Dakota National Guard to invade Saskatchewan, Donald Trump is going to run out of weird-ass “executive orders” to dream up…
Read More...by David Benjamin “It’ll be quite quiet when you first get on/ But as that tram keeps moving along/ It’ll fill with people starting on their day/ They’ll be laughing and joking as they eat/ They’ll be passing plates along the seats/ Your night of heartache will soon seem far away/ And even though you’re…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Aren’t there any grownups at all?” — Piggy PARIS—One of the blessings of a liberal arts education is the ability to discern timeless themes from the turmoil of the moment. The return of Donald Trump to his Second Reich at the Resolute Desk, attended by a menagerie of suckups and vandals, has…
Read More...by David Benjamin “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way” —Juan Ramon Jimenez PARIS—The dilemma of the moment in America and beyond: Confrontation or subversion? Or both? I offer a case in point: Many moons ago, the renowned La Scala Opera Company of Milan mounted a lengthy excursion to Japan. It brought…
Read More...by David Benjamin Jerome was a giant. Nobody told him he was a giant, but he figured it out. Jerome lived indoors and never went out. There were no windows in his house. If there were windows, the tinies might be able to squeeze inside. They might get hurt. Jerome had learned a lot from…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t.” —Trump STOCKHOLM—In announcing the creation of a new category in the world’s most prestigious international awards program, Sigurd Sigurdssonn, chairman of the Nobel Prize Search Committee, has denied that…
Read More...Roger Goodell, Commissioner National Football League 345 Park Avenue New York NY 10154 Dear Mr. Goodell: I’m writing to you about a National Football League problem of which you are likely unaware and to which you are unlikely to seek a solution. Indeed, as with most of the occasional missives I address to the rich…
Read More...by David Benjamin “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, “It isn’t just one of your holiday games…” —T.S. Eliot MADISON, Wis.—If there’s any silver lining in America’s descent toward strongman despotism, it’s the left wing’s opportunity to undertake a linguistic reset, to heed Thoreau’s advice: “Simplify, simplify.” The people who uneasily call ourselves…
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