Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, 6 May 9 am
Radio Interview with Phil Nee, on “Jim Otis and Smalltown Crime, WRCO Radio, Richland Center, Wis.
Friday, 29 May, 7 pm
Book Talk, Signing and Sale, on “Upstairs and the Jim Otis Series,” Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
Saturday, 30 May,1-3 pm
Meet & Greet, Signing & Sale of Last Kid Books, at Belleville Books, 20 East Main St., Belleville, Ill.
The Weekly Screed
by David Benjamin THE VATICAN, 29 April—The first day of the conclave of cardinals to choose a successor to Pope Francis has ended in traditional disarray. Afterward, two furtive figures, recognizable as a Monsignor O’Malley and Cardinal Bellini, an American prelate who bears an eerie resemblance to Stanley Tucci, enter the Chapel men’s room. Msgr.…
by David Benjamin “Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.” ― W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe MADISON, Wis.—In the Wisconsin town where I lived ’til I was thirteen, there were two “official” baseball fields, complete with…
by David Benjamin “[Peter] Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.” — Elon Musk MADISON, Wis.—My friend Smedley has survived for decades as a Washington D.C. “insider.” The secret of his success is a chameleonlike knack for adjusting to the ebb and flow of the ideological tides in American politics. He keenly predicted, during…
by David Benjamin “You gotta do the Black Botton/ Gotta do the Shag/ And the Charleston/ And the Varsity Drag/ Oh, how I love the ladies/ Wear collegiate, collegiate clothes/ We’re so collegiate/ Rather be a ladies/ Rather be a ladies man…” —Good News MADISON, Wis.—When I was sixteen, I added about two pounds to…
by David Benjamin “By word and deed, Trump treats Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as his only real peers. Our allies, by contrast, are our subordinates. It’s as if Putin, Xi and Trump were feudal lords and each were entitled to his own feudal domain.” —David French, NY Times, 23 March MADISON, Wis.—Writing in 1948,…
by David Benjamin “I learned how to read the distance of a flyball from the crack of the bat over the radio and the tone of Earl Gillespie’s response (he never, ever hyped a warning-track quail as a dinger).” —David Benjamin, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked MADISON, Wis.—It wasn’t an every…
by David Benjamin “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” —Vince Lombardi MADISON, Wis.—Right around the time he applies his Sharpie to an edict changing the name of Canada to Trumpanada and sending the North Dakota National Guard to invade Saskatchewan, Donald Trump is going to run out of weird-ass “executive orders” to dream up…
by David Benjamin “It’ll be quite quiet when you first get on/ But as that tram keeps moving along/ It’ll fill with people starting on their day/ They’ll be laughing and joking as they eat/ They’ll be passing plates along the seats/ Your night of heartache will soon seem far away/ And even though you’re…
by David Benjamin “Aren’t there any grownups at all?” — Piggy PARIS—One of the blessings of a liberal arts education is the ability to discern timeless themes from the turmoil of the moment. The return of Donald Trump to his Second Reich at the Resolute Desk, attended by a menagerie of suckups and vandals, has…
by David Benjamin “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way” —Juan Ramon Jimenez PARIS—The dilemma of the moment in America and beyond: Confrontation or subversion? Or both? I offer a case in point: Many moons ago, the renowned La Scala Opera Company of Milan mounted a lengthy excursion to Japan. It brought…