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 “The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.” ― Douglas Adams PARIS—The fat girl was asking after me. Hotlips…
Read More...by David Benjamin “The objects of which Paris folks are fond– literature, art, medicine, and adultery.” — Mark Twain MADISON, Wis.—During one of my Paris sojourns a few years ago, I was visibly perplexed (Hotlips said to me, “You look perplexed. What’s gong on?”) by a big demonstration in Paris over a proposed French law…
Read More...by David Benjamin “The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, ‘Where is the best place to go to?’ He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.” — Donald Trump, 23 Jan. ‘16 It all started with a question from ABC News’ David Muir during the September 10 presidential debate. Muir asked ex-president Donald Trump his position…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Wait a minute, Mrs. Twombly! Now that we’ve graduated, you want us to call you ‘ALICE’? That’s like having a friend named Alice and suddenly she asks you to call her ‘Spot’!” MADISON, Wis.—One Friday night in my seventeenth year, probably after a football or basketball game … Wait a minute, how…
Read More...by David Benjamin “I’m from Milwaukee and I oughta know/ It’s draft-brewed Blatz beer wherever you go!/ Smoother, fresher, less filling, that’s clear!/ Blatz is Milwaukee’s finest beer.” MADISON, Wis.—During my strange career interlude as a public relations flack in Boston, I became an avid reader of Advertising Age, the bulging weekly chronicle of the…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Parents had nothing to do with school. Once you were out the door in the morning, your parents washed their hands of you. You became entirely the property of the school. St. Mary’s could do anything it wanted to me—hang me by my thumbs and tickle my feet—and Mom didn’t want to…
Read More...by David Benjamin “You have to be a man first before you’re a gentleman.” —John Wayne, McClintock (1963) MADISON, Wis.—A couple of women recently scolded me for broaching the question—sensitively, I thought—of whether, how and when a guy should compliment a gal on her appearance. In the news that very week, coincidentally, a wave of…
Read More...by David Benjamin “Whenas in silks my Julia goes,/ Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows/ That liquefaction of her clothes.” —Robert Herrick MADISON, Wis.—Is it chivalry, I wonder, or sly salacity? How, without making the wrongimpression does a 21st-century guy compliment a woman on how she looks, particularly if she’s a total (but fetching) stranger?…
Read More...by David Benjamin “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is Mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?” —J.D. Vance,…
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