I think it is very cool that joking and laughing are human universals, according to anthropologist Donald Brown in his study of cultures from around the world and throughout time. How can we ever be overcome when we can laugh? How can we bomb each other when we know that we all tell jokes? I … Continue reading
In studying British history, I keep running into the same guy with a different name, so I named him Sir Lord Chauncey Twitass. Sir Chauncey is a hereditary landowner, a landlord (think about that word-Land Lord) and master of men. Why should Sir Chauncey find himself in this privileged position? Is he more deserving than … Continue reading
A certain North Carolina pastor got his fifteen minutes of fame when he said gay people should be fenced off somewhere until they eventually die off. He stood his moral high ground, however, and stated, “I’ve got a King James Bible. I’ve been a pastor for 53 years. Do you think I’m going to bail … Continue reading
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, asked a shocking question of his patients after he was released: “Why don’t you kill yourself?” Frankl’s short, moving book Man’s Search for Meaning should be required reading for every human being on the planet. In the Nazi camps, they lost everything: clothes, papers, jewelry, … Continue reading
Mark Twain once wrote a friend, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one.” Knowing what to leave out, boiling a thing down to its essence-that is the challenge. How to say a thing as simply as possible? This approach is sort of the opposite to economists, who … Continue reading
I have been working on a painting for the next Magic Barn book about the piglets, who were very rebellious and often escaped and roamed about, though their mother was frantically calling for them to come back. I added the banty hens, the cat, the hollyhocks and morning glories and what the heck, why not … Continue reading
Do you think the global elite doesn’t care what you think? Au contraire. As Michael Parenti says, that’s the only thing they care about you; not if you have food, shelter or any shred of hope-but what are the peons thinking? They are scared of us! I was surprised when, in a video about a … Continue reading
So many people were disgusted by the war in Iraq that when a new proposal arose for similar adventures in Syria, The People rebelled en masse. The People rebelled for various stated reasons: The Iraq war was so expensive. The Iraq war was a dismal failure. The Iraq war was based on lies. Of the … Continue reading
Perhaps you, like I, see problems with both cowboy capitalism and creaky communism. But what is the alternative? As Monty Python used to say, “And now for something completely different.” Modern Money Theory is simply the contention that any nation that has a sovereign currency, that is, ‘prints’ its own money, can never go broke, … Continue reading
Supposedly the 1950’s was the Golden Age of America to which we should all return. I grew up in the 1950’s and didn’t know I was living in a Golden Age, much like most folks don’t realize they are living through the fall of their empire as it crumbles around them. This painting is for … Continue reading
