It should not be as hard as it has been to see the next sunrise. We made it through 2020, but a month after the calendar turned, I’m still not sure how we did it. There were many days when no betting man would have taken odds on our survival. Often, I assumed that our […]
Category Archives: General News
Poll 31: Singles
On toplining In 1996, our swaggering Poll winner made a memorable boast on his own behalf. “No one writes them like they used to”, sang Stuart Murdoch, “so it may as well be me.” He then demonstrated what he meant. “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” runs on a sturdy chord progression – one […]
Poll 31: Miscellaneous Categories
A quote from Brian Block, who has been voting in this Poll for many years, in response to my not-too-excited reaction to Letter To You in this year’s Pop Music Abstract: “Because you’re a Springsteen fan, I think you’re missing the point of why so many of us are so taken by Letter To You. I hadn’t […]
Poll 31: My list
All my life, I’ve been an enthusiastic book-reader. I’ve covered most of the classic kids’ stuff and plenty of the longer (but certainly no better) novels designed for grown-ups. While there are some famous movies I’ve missed, I think I’ve watched most of the celebrated ones. I never got into superhero comics, but I’ve been […]
Poll 31: My list, continued
Traditionally, I use this space to write something political. It’s part of my brand, and I’ve been assured by several editors that personal branding is indispensable to the modern writer. I’ve got to admit, though, that I’m not really feeling it this year. I thought the Capitol rioters were a bunch of yahoos, and therefore […]
The Chilean solution
There are many reasons you might be jealous of Chile: six hundred miles of coastline, mariscos and avocados, swell Mediterranean climate, a great pop scene in Santiago, etcetera. Me, I am jealous of Chileans because of what they managed to accomplish last week. By a landslide – more than three quarters of votes cast – Chile […]
Just before the fall
Election Day is two months away. I don’t think we’re prepared for it. There are going to be arguments and hot air, there’ll be disbelief, there’ll be conspiracy theories, charges and counter-charges, accusations, psychological breakdowns, horror shows on the nightly news, psy-ops in broad daylight. Will there be violence? I sure hope not. But the […]
Hater you participate
I consider it a thing of monstrous arrogance to support a political candidate because he or she agrees with me. For starters, my judgment is compromised in dozens of ways. I take it for granted that I’m misinformed, and woefully ill-equipped to untangle the sort of knotty problems that leaders face. John McCain stands out […]
Seven score and four years ago
The Kentucky primary election is still too close to call. A landslide of mail-in ballots are going to need to be counted, and that’s going to take time. Understandably, many voters were reluctant to head to the voting booths in the middle of a pandemic. But many weren’t, and the lines outside polling places became a story, […]
Can’t happen here
We started getting reports from China in early January. They were sketchy, but we knew something was going on. Then there were the cruise ships, at least one of which regularly docked in Bayonne. Close to home, quite literally, but the news didn’t clarify much. By late February, the doors to the Life Care Center […]