One of the reasons for my loathing of modern architecture is its relentless utilitarianism; as James Howard Kunstler once wrote, and I paraphrase out of laziness, its schools and libraries fail to convey the higher calling of learning, its courthouses offer no visual cues about the majesty of law, and even its banks fail to [...]
It’s gotten rather difficult for me lately to muster up any great surprise over the startlingly racist bile spewing out of the right, since the frequency and proud frankness is enough to make anyone’s already dizzy head spin. Listening to a Republican on TV lately is not unlike listening to my Grandmother, Etta, back in [...]
For the past few weeks, I’ve been meaning to write about Glenn Beck, the teabaggers, and the utter, forehead-slapping craziness that has enveloped the Right, and for some reason haven’t been able to. Not because there isn’t enough material, mind you, but because writing a 600-word piece about a movement (as in “bowel”) so deliciously [...]
I’ve always understood, from an early age, some people’s reticence about discussing money, and indeed blanched a bit in the company of those who dwelled on the subject, but the behavior of our financial overlords on Wall Street as they stuff their pockets with taxpayer money before our very eyes isn’t just reprehensible, although it [...]
When my crazy grandmother, Etta, used to say that the “commies and the unions are ruining the country,” I dismissed it as I did most everything else she said, as probably close to the opposite of the fact, which turned out to be a pretty successful formula over time. First of all, in Portland, Oregon [...]
Well, it’s a good thing I’m not some smarty pants editor of that commie rag, the New York Times, because if I were, I’d be nervous as a whore in church. You see, any minute now, Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg could be walking in, to pummel me with baseball bats. They said so. On [...]