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
No entrance by David Benjamin “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.” — Jean-Paul Sartre PARIS — Yesterday, coming up the stairs in our 17th-century no-elevator building, I paused wearily on the 108th step. It wasn’t just a matter of fatigue. I was gripped by a…
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#735) Three-word philosophies by David Benjamin “… And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s…
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#734) God’s great afterthought by David Benjamin “…the unborn, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is an almost monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to…
MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#733) Internet zombies by David Benjamin “Yea, thou [sic] I walk through the valley of the shadow of death/ 95,000 Americans killed by illegal aliens since 9-11.” — Americans for Legal Immigration PAC MADISON, Wis. — Good old Homer has cut me off. This is a shame, because…
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#732) Land of the aggrieved, home of the whiny by David Benjamin “I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine, because I want to win.” — Donald Trump MADISON, Wis. — Excuse me for a moment while I compare Donald Trump, red-state narcissist, to the Rev. Martin…
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#731) Stop playing defense, Zorba. Play the Game(s) your way! by David Benjamin TO: Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister, Hellenic Republic Dear Prime Minister Tsipras: Please accept my belated congratulations on your triumph last month in the Greek-bailout plebiscite. Although this was, in many respects, a Pyrrhic victory, it…
FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#730) “Good fences?” by David Benjamin “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” — Robert Frost MADISON, Wis. — The only fence I ever loved was here in Madison, erected around an immense construction site for what became the Elvehjem Art Center. Known modestly as the University…
TUESDAY, JULY 14, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#728) Sour grapes by David Benjamin “Never hurts to give us a crack at something… but we’re not going to publish a book narrated by a dog who ‘discourses on human/dog relations and canine theology while debating dog ethics with a poodle named Cupcake.’ That’s just not us…”…
TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#727) When Oliver Stone mishandled Michael Caine by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — In my newspaper days as editor of a Massachusetts weekly, the Mansfield News, I probably had too much fun. There was, for example, a summer day in 1981 when I needed to fill space in…
TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#726) The prebuttal imperative of the “liberal media” by David Benjamin PARIS — I thought I’d coined the word “prebuttal” until today when, in the New York Times, I found Paul Vallely using it in an op-ed piece about Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical, Laudato Sii. Vallely was citing…