Category: Uncategorized
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Current reading
I am reading the delectable Anne Lamott’s “Hallelujah Anyway.” Anne is the funniest, saddest, feistiest and most lovable advocate for Christianity you are likely to find. She likes to ask things such as if there is love and mercy at the center of the universe, then why is everything so screwed up? Her answers are…
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The Poet of the Mean Streets
“Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane, Copywright 2023, Harper Collins, 299 pgs It is not easy, at first anyway, to classify Dennis Lahane as a writer. He’s not quite a mystery writer though his books are often whodunits of a sort along with other things. “Crime writer” would likely be a better description because he nearly…
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I am absorbed by reading about the outbreak of Word War I. How did this mess, which destroyed a civilization, and a century and more later is still affecting the world, come about? Who were the main characters? What about the political, economic, and diplomatic events and trends which were involved? Whose “fault” was it?…
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Halloween– Notes & Movies
I don’t really have time to do anything elaborate or nearly so on Halloween. The circumstances of the country, the world, and myself have conspired to make it difficult to do everything I want to do on time. This is too bad because it is, in a weird and contradictory way, one of my favorite…
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A Higher Mountain
It was less than a week ago when I finished a blog here in my local library where I sit right now and sent it out to be published. I did not require a lot of time after that to find out that my article was already obsolete when it hit the email sites. The…
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The President Climbs a Mountain
Joe Biden will, I think, never be accused of not trying. He has taken on some of the worst difficulties–covid, the covid-brought about economic mess, a fractious and divided opposition(today’s Republicans), Putin & Ukraine and now the current tragic unfolding events in Gaza and Israel. There is much still unknown and undetermined and ,much we…
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The Biden-Blinken Nightmare–Two Crises abroad, One at Home and No Apparent Solution
I wonder if President Biden or State Secretary Blinken regrets today that he is in office. Most likely not–they are both patriotic and deveoted men who want to do what is right. But it would be hard to blame one or both of them if he wished he were relaxing on a beach in retirement…
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Farewell, Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett died a few weeks ago and left a whole lot of people bereft. I don’t know if he will get it, but here’s my letter to him. I miss you Jimmy, already, and I had rarely thought of you in recent years. So you couldn’t honestly call me a real fan, I didn’t…
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A Riddle from a Poet and a Novelist
There is a bookstore in a part of Minneapolis, W 25th St about a mile or two west of Hennepin more exactly, which is in a location I love. This is a pleasant upper middle class area which could well be called suburbia if it were not in a leading American city. The store is…
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Favorite Album
I may think of something else later and regret this, but my immediate response in Joni Mitchell’s “Miles of Aisles”–got “Carrie” on it along with “The Last Time I Saw Richard” and “A Case of You” which Diana Krall would later turn into one of the greatest jazz performances ever. A lot of Joni’s fans…
john's thoughts 