WELL-INTENTIONED IF PRE-SENILE statesman, or dangerously charismatic demagogue? I think the choice is clear.
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those writing-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pencil. He is unafraid of adverbs, and lives with an animal companion and eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
Aside
Hamas must be defeated.
The hostages must be released.
But Netanyahu cannot be trusted to wage a just war in a just way. Let us not forget that almost the entire country turned out, in the weeks before Oct. 7, to demonstrate against his would-be ironfisted dictatorship.
I am heartsick and soul-sore that too many innocents have died, are dying, and will die. Meanwhile, the world’s ravening Jew-hatred continues unabated. It’s getting worse, in fact.
Also meanwhile, I can hear my spirit hardening, like cement patching a broken sidewalk. And it scares me.
At what point do we raise our voices in protest? Where? To whom?
And — what good would it do?
I’m Going to Make This Viral If It’s the Last Thing I Do
THAT IS TO SAY, THIS: That Sonoma Valley’s Jewish community, centered around Congregation Shir Shalom, is “our little Anatevka-among-the-vines.” So there.
I’m not here. I’m an event. I’m an improbable coalescence of stardust enjoying one fleeting, glorious dance through the cosmos before … poof.”
— Adrian Bliss
5 Thoughts: Lifechangers
0. YOU ARE ON A PATH, Suddenly, something knocks you onto another one. Here are five (of my many) “somethings.” 1. 2001: A space odyssey. At the tender age of six, my mind was blown, by what I could not…
Me and Mr. Jones
OUR TALE BEGINS SOME YEARS ago at my then-girlfriend’s folks’ house, specifically at their “hutch” — a giant, glass-shelved cabinet filled with such sentimental knickknacks and keepsakes as a commemorative Shirley Temple mug, souvenir spoons, porcelain bells, and the “good…
“2001” in 2024
LET’S TAKE IT FROM THE top, shall we? – Earth-orbiting weapons: check. – Commercial spaceflight: check. – “Shirtsleeve” space environments: check. – Seatback videoscreens: check. (Legal pad-sized portable videoscreens: check.) – Spaceflight stewardesses: not to my knowledge. – Zero-G pens:…
Free Verse: “And God Said”
SEEK ME, EACH OF YOU, in your own way. And when you find Me? Prove it: Leave each other the hell alone. originally published: 2011.06.04
5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.
0. READ CAREFULLY — THERE WILL BE a test later on. 1. In the book of Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that G?d wants to enter into a contract with them. With one voice, and without knowing the…
Sales Experience Necessary
IT HAS LONG BEEN PROPOSED in some circles that, in order to build a better class of citizens, we need some sort of national-service program along the lines of an in-house Peace Corps or revamped Works Progress Administration. “Give people…
We’re all just raindrops on a windshield.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, to Michael Richards in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”
Let’s Get Real
ON THIS DAY EIGHT YEARS ago, I stepped out from under the shadow of a decades-long cannabis addiction. And I haven’t been the same man since. Thank God. What brought me to that point was twofold: I decided that 1)…