Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, 8 July, noon - Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Mount Horeb Rotary Club, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin
Monday, 13 July, 11:15 am - Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Verona Community Center, 108 Paoli Street, Verona, Wisconsin
Tuesday, 14 July, 7 pm - A Dialog on Writing with Dave Wood, Whitehall Public Library, 18560 Scranton Street, Whitehall, Wisconsin.
The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin “‘I think that livestreaming this attack gives me some motivation in the way that I know that some people will be cheering for me,’” ― Payton Gendron MADISON, Wis. — An unencrypted smartphone dialog intercepted by an undisclosed federal agency after white-panic gunman Payton Gendron murdered ten Black Americans at the Tops…
by David Benjamin “She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veterans’ benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she’s collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000.” …
by David Benjamin “No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity.” ― Tristan Tzara, The Dada Manifesto 1918 PARIS — There is nothing more poisonous to civil society than purity. The purity police reared their shrouded form and bared their scythes again this week, in the pinched, pious…
by David Benjamin “When it rains in Paris, it bleeds into swift little gutters. You can see your reflection over its mercury embryo.” ― Sneha Subramanian Kanta PARIS — An apartment in Paris is like Nietzsche’s abyss. It looks into you, senses your weaknesses and spoils for its chance to pounce. Twenty-five-odd years ago, in…
by David Benjamin “… You can’t go back home to your family—to a young man’s dream of fame and glory, to the country cottage away from strife and conflict, to the father you have lost, to the old forms and systems of things which seemed everlasting but are changing all the time…” —Thomas Wolfe…
by David Benjamin “… I couldn’t help anyone because I… was seriously injured. My entire face and both of my hands were burnt. I went home to Midori-machi stepping over the bodies of the injured and the dead. They looked like forgotten baggage…” —Woman quoted in The Witness of Those Two Days: Hiroshima &…
by David Benjamin “… So many deejays so far away/ You oughta heard the records they would play/ On that little transistor, my big sister’s radio/ My big sister’s transistor radio had a song for my heart and a song for my soul/ One for my heartaches and one for my fears…” —Tommy Castro…
by David Benjamin “I copped a gig at Minton’s and one night Alfred Lions came in to dig us. He said we gassed him, but we were too far out for the people …” — Babs Gonzalez MADISON, Wis. — Since “woke” horned its way into the vernacular a few years ago, I’ve struggled…
by David Benjamin “… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants are driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification…” — George Orwell, Politics and the English…
by David Benjamin “The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.” — Capt. James T. Kirk MADISON, Wis. — All through my grade-school years, a Friday afternoon tabloid called The Weekly Reader was every kid’s gateway to a golden tomorrow. In its inky newsprint pages were unveiled breathtaking technological…