Congressional Hearings Can Change A Nation

July 11, 2022

In what were to become known as The Army-McCarthy hearings, the US Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations wrestled with the chicanery of falsified documents while its forgers lied and hurled nonsense accusations of sexual perversion and radical leftism. The year was 1954, and I was living in Lincolnwood, Illinois, adjacent to Skokie, in a home built…

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Not from Seattle? Not to worry!

July 4, 2022

Because, like the Golden Gate Quartet, I’ll put on my Traveling Shoes, and may be at a venue near you some day soon. But maybe you’re in town, maybe you missed the book launch on June 4 (pix below!) Well in that case, I’d love to see you Thursday, July 14 at 7 PM *…

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Interview! On KZSC, One of the Great Independent Radio Stations

July 1, 2022

Here’s a recent interview that introduces you to my hot-off-the-presses book, Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love. Don’t click that, CLICK THIS!

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Utopia, Metopia, All God’s Chillun’ Gottopia!

June 23, 2022

I keep saying that it’s time we talk more about what might be distant visions of a more perfect society…I think that’s the ongoing American dream. So I’m giving the mic to a good friend and guest blogger Paul Luczak, who takes a pragmatic view in describing the closest we’re likely to get now and…

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Harry Langdon and the Disruptive Play of Slapstick

June 16, 2022

And more of me talkin’ ’bout it coming up this July…. Harry Langdon is the forgotten superstar of slapstick, whose popularity rivaled Charlie Chaplin’s, Harold Lloyd’s and Buster Keaton’s in the 1920s. He frequently evoked an overgrown child in his mannerisms, cherubic yet pre-moral. Many consider his best films to be The Strong Man (1926),…

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Happy Birthday, Sun Ra [Part 2]

May 20, 2022

Sun Ra, Part 2 From the early 1950s until 1982, Sun Ra and the various configurations of his big band released, by some scholars’ count, more record albums than anyone else. Few of those albums were insignificant. One could debate which of the first four albums—Sound of Joy; Jazz by Sun Ra, Vol. 1; Super-Sonic…

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