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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
The scraggly oak trees intertwine their branches in a tall ceiling that shades the entire drive. Here, the appropriate view of the eternal isn’t blue and bright, but sheltered and close to the ground. The rows of marble and granite dazzled by bright flowers have their own quiet redemption as the slow speed limit and a gentle wave from each passerby gives the setting grace.
This is Oakland Cemetery, Saint Paul’s municipal cemetery, founded in 1853.
Jobs are scarce and workers are feeling the pinch all around. Republicans would have you believe the government is to blame, limiting growth through bureaucracy. Democrats would have you believe that companies are simply greedy. But is the income of American workers really limited by a lack of growth or the avarice of a privileged few?
The short answer is just a bit more complicated. The distribution of the income has changed substantially since postwar America changed sometime around 1968. It’s not a failure of government or even the greediness of corporations, but a change in the most important market there is – the market for the talent and hard work of ordinary Americans.
After the mechanized cruelty and destruction of World War II, two important works of literature tried to capture the feeling of despair. Along with well known 1984(1948) by George Orwell, there is the lesser known Age of Anxiety (1947) by W H Auden. Both of these cast a shadow we still live under, twisting our language to defy and define a mechanical world not entirely fit for humans. Auden’s more romantic treatment is worth the read if for no reason other than its resonance today. Continue reading
It was a long hard Winter. It’s not letting go too easily here in the heartland, with Spring coming in short fits just long enough to give us all hope. But the transition is as bright as the green carpet of grass that covers the park, as pervasive as the smell of rain in the air, and as loud as the excitement along West Seventh Street. Each moment finds its own pace.
My daughter Thryn will graduate from High School in less than a month. Her dreams of hitting the road and finding a life beyond childhood color everything in her attitude now. The dark senioritis that wants to laze the last few moments collapses into anxiety in unpredictable fits of realization. Soon enough it really will be all about her, the desires of every teen made starkly real.
For her doting Dad it’s time to let go. As a parent, I can’t be good at everything.
Part of the problem with the news today is that nearly everything in the world is interconnected. Stories have a tendency to bleed into each other for a variety of reasons, such as their equal usefulness as political tools or because the actors are involved in many different things at once. A good conspiracy theorist can link two stories together in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.
This may be one of those moments. Caveat Lector, let the reader beware.
There is little doubt that the theft of credit cards from Target last Winter could be traced to Ukraine – and, in so doing, the network of organized crime we might call the “Russian Mafia”. It is more accurate to refer to them by their own name for themselves, Bratva (Ukrainian for “Brotherhood”) because they are an international syndicate based in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and operating nearly everywhere.
An estimate of their take from credit card fraud puts into perspective the scale of the problem in Ukraine, We can estimate the resources they have as well as the stake they are fighting for as they resist the introduction of order and the rule of law. It also points to the US role in Ukraine – which is to say without sending in troops.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 