Upcoming Events:
Friday, 24 April, 2 p.m.
Independent Press Association BookCamp, David Benjamin to speak on “The Writer’s Gauntlet,” Hilton Doubletree Hotel, Newark, New Jersey
Thursday, 30 April 2:15 pm
Radio Interview with Sharyn Alden on “Everybody’s Got a Story,” Sun Prairie Media Center
Wednesday, 6 May 9 am
Radio Interview with Phil Nee, on “Jim Otis and Smalltown Crime, WRCO Radio, Richland Center, Wis.
The Weekly Screed
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,…
by David Benjamin “Waging war on bronze men doesn’t make your life any more moral or just.” ― Maria Lipman MADISON, Wis. — In eighth grade, when I was plowing doggedly through Moby Dick, I began to glimpse the power and ambiguity of symbolism. The white whale is perhaps the most compelling symbol in all…
by David Benjamin “The president does read… The president is the most informed person on planet Earth…” — Presidential press secretary Kayleigh McEnaney MADISON, Ws. — Among the lesser noticed Top Secret documents that leaked — well, it was more of a flood — from highly placed but fearfully anonymous sources in Washington in the…
by David Benjamin “… Antifa, short for anti-fascists, hasn’t killed anyone and appears to have been only a marginal presence in Black Lives Matter protests. None of those arrested on serious federal charges related to the unrest have been linked to antifa…” — Nicholas Kristof, N.Y. Times “We have to find one, Your Majesty.” It’s…