Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, 6 May 9 am
Radio Interview with Phil Nee, on “Jim Otis and Smalltown Crime, WRCO Radio, Richland Center, Wis.
Friday, 29 May, 7 pm
Book Talk, Signing and Sale, on “Upstairs and the Jim Otis Series,” Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
Saturday, 30 May,1-3 pm
Meet & Greet, Signing & Sale of Last Kid Books, at Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin “All through grade school, I had seen the tall, the strong, the swift, the comely, the bright and affluent among my peers reap notice, bask in praise and collect loving cups while the rest of us gleaned consolation from the crumbs at their feet. We lived by the motto, “Nice try.” Without…
by David Benjamin “Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.” ― Pat Conroy “You talking to me, teach?” —…
by David Benjamin (ISSUED FROM THE OVAL OFFICE AND SIGNED ON 4 SEPTEMBER 2020) By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution, the laws of the United States of America and the universal consensus that I alone can fix the horror left behind by the Kenyan usurper, and to protect the Nation…
by David Benjamin “All this time I watched my woman/ Drownin’ in a pool of tears,/ And I’ve seen a lot of good folks die/ That had a lot of bills to pay…” — “Take This Job and Shove It” (lyrics, David Allan Coe) MADISON, Wis. — For at least 1,500 days I’ve been trying…
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — As I consider a Postal Service targeted for vivisection by a paranoid narcissist and run by a fatcat hitman with a dirty scalpel, I scroll through my lifelong romance — with stamps and parcel post, love letters and amiable, unflappable mailcarriers. My first mailman was twenty minutes late every…
by David Benjamin OVAL OFFICE — (A group of aides around POTUS, all quaking in their wingtips. The papers they hold in their trembling hands make a gentle rustling sound, like dead leaves in a wasteland.) AIDE #1: “Your Eminence, there’s bad news.” POTUS: “Bad news? I hate bad news. Who the hell are you?…
by David Benjamin My mother-in-law is hibakusha, an A-bomb survivor. On the morning of August 6, 1945, she took the last train out of the center of Hiroshima, an area known forever after as Ground Zero. She was a schoolgirl required to work in a munitions plant on the edge of the city. It was…
by David Benjamin “The gap between stated voting support for Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. grows by about 2.5 percentage points in Mr. Biden’s favor when a county has extremely high levels of coronavirus-related deaths relative to when it has low levels.” — “The Upshot,” New York Times, 28 July MADISON, Wis. — …
by David Benjamin “Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t.…
by David Benjamin “July eighth, 1979, all the fathers of Nobel Prize winners were rounded up by United Nations military units… and actually forced at gunpoint to give semen samples in little plastic jars, which are now stored below Rockefeller Center underneath the ice skating rink…” — Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson), in Conspiracy Theory MADISON,…