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
Why is this woman not an episode of ‘Criminal Minds’? by David Benjamin “Hill’ry Clinton took an ax, and gave Vince Foster forty whacks. “When she saw what she had done, she gave Chris Stevens forty-one.” — Popular children’s rhyme MADISON, Wis. — The latest kerfuffle over Donald Trump’s ambiguous call for “Second Amendment people”…
“Through every Middlesex village and farm” by David Benjamin “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” — The Bill of Rights Grosscup answered the door. He was in his pajamas. His coffee was brewing. He had…
A letter to my Senator by David Benjamin The Honorable Tammy Baldwin United States Senate 717 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-4906 Dear Sen. Baldwin: Not too long ago, I went back to my childhood hometown of Tomah to drop off a copy of my latest published novel, A Sunday Kind of Love, at…
The year of the Ape Man by David Benjamin “I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.” — John Dryden, Conquest of Granada (1672) MADISON, Wis. — Lately, my know-it-all attitude has been getting me into trouble. A high-school…
… Real white of you by David Benjamin “You’re a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your…
Fix it, America by David Benjamin “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” — Samuel Johnson MADISON, Wis. — Sam Johnson’s observation on the nature of knowledge keeps coming back to me, sometimes unexpectedly. The latest occasion was a comment by Paul…
The roar of the grease stain, the smell under the hood by David Benjamin “Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.” — E. B. White MADISON, Wis. — The presumptuous Republican presidential candidate styles himself as a man of the people, the buddy of the working class. But how…
The NRA’s worst nightmare by David Benjamin “The Bible says that homosexuals should be put to death… Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place… these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels…” — Pastor Steven Anderson, Faithful Word…
The universal kitchen table by David Benjamin “Out of the kitchen, to stew is to fret, to worry, to agitate. In the kitchen, however, to stew is to have great expectations” — Molly O’Neill PARIS — In another life, with another wife, my in-laws were Ralph and Edie, who lived above a store in Jamaica…
The Achilles’ kisser of Donald Trump by David Benjamin “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” — Donald Trump PARIS — It’s a mystery — especially given the example he has established — why none of his opponents for the presidency of the United States have attacked…