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
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#703) The fresh eye dances, the jaded eye drifts by David Benjamin PARIS — A.O. Scott, the Times’ venerable movie critic has named his Ten Best Films of 2014. I confess that I didn’t pay it much heed, despite my respect for Scott’s erudition. A guilty glance told…
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#702) Izzy Glick, Nativity impresario by David Benjamin BETHLEHEM, 0 A.D. — Contrary to popular legend, the desk clerk at the inn — whose name was Nahim — was sympathetic to the bedraggled couple who arrived from Nazareth and asked for a room. After giving them the bad…
MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#701) Christmas through a glass, darkly by David Benjamin On a recent visit to New York, I got together with a lifelong friend, Pat Keeffe, who was in the first graduating class (‘65) at LaFollette High. Earlier this year, Pat and his family had mourned the too-soon loss…
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#700) Diary of a wetback skip tracer by David Benjamin “ICE deported almost 393,000 people from the U.S. in 2010. At $12,500 per person the cost to remove them was almost $5 billion.” — Associated Press This is the city. Los Angeles. I work here. I’m a dick.…
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#699) With friends like these… by David Benjamin “… the Islamic State, or ISIS, is homegrown; its aim is not to strike far away, but to spread and impose its vision of Islamic society right here and right now…” — Thomas L. Friedman in Dubai MADISON, Wis. —…
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#698) What’s in it for me? by David Benjamin “This is not the time to lay out an agenda.” — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell MADISON, Wis. — Every election year, the New York Times sends reporters out to some depressed working-class community in flyover country — Ypsilanti,…
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#697) The first thing we do, let’s kill all the spies by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — Americans tend to learn most of what we know about our “intelligence” establishment by watching TV. For example, I consumed a whole season of “Homeland” and discovered that your typical CIA…
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#696) Apocalypse now… and tomorrow… and the day after that by David Benjamin “Good morning, ladies and germs! It’s Monday, and I’m Fred Fiermonger, alongside my co-host Abigail Angst, and this is ‘Good Grief, America,’ your daily wake-up-and-smell-the-napalm call here on the Anecdotal News Network. As you all…
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#695) A political scene we’d like to see by David Benjamin (A proposed script — without talking points — for Mary Burke, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, at Friday night’s second debate.) “Good evening, everyone. I’m Mary Burke. So what, right? “Most of you don’t know me from a hole…
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2014 The Weekly Screed (#694) “Ick!” by David Benjamin “This is judicial activism at its worst. The Constitution entrusts state legislatures, elected by the People, to define marriage consistent with the values and mores of their citizens. Unelected judges should not be imposing their policy preferences to subvert the considered judgments of…