Edward Curtin

October’s Surprise Party

As another October approaches, the beautiful season of colors begins here in New England.  Call it October’s Surprise Party.  The turning leaves with all their colors come to announce the…

Mirages

I am sitting on the beach at the National Seashore, a forty-mile long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean seashore on Outer Cape Cod, established in 1961 by President Kennedy.  The…

Biden and Trump Battle over a Rattle

“Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.”– Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking-Glass Once you understand that profound poem,…

Acting As If It Weren’t Really So

Laughing on the bus/Playing Games with the faces/She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy/I said, “Be careful his bowtie is really a camera” – America by Paul Simon…

If The Wars Go On

I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World…

Fire in the Soul: Nick Lyons

With lilacs in the dooryard blooming a week ago, I was struck by a sense of synchronicity so strong that I stood stone still and sniffed the air for its…

The Immense Hunger

Like all living creatures, people need to eat to live.  Some people, eaten from within by a demonic force, try to deny others this basic sustenance.  All across the world…

Sick, and Sick of It All

Sometimes it takes our bodies to return us to our souls.  And our little pains to remind us of the indescribable pain of the savage killing and dismemberment of innocent…

The Unexpected

Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence.  This may seem like a truism, but…

Biden in Rags

“You used to be so amusedAt Napoleon in rags and the language that he usedGo to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuseWhen you ain’t got nothing, you got…

An Immense Hunger

Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not,…

Chance Encounters as the Walls Close In

“Apple Blossom – Blue Sky” by amandabhslater “A treasure stumbled upon, suddenly; not gradually accumulated, by adding one to one. The accumulation of learning, ‘adding to the sum-total of human knowledge’;…

Mr. Blue and the CIA

“This is slavery, not to speak one’s thoughts.” – Euripides, The Phoenician Women Some time ago on a Sunday evening when my wife and I had just sat down to dinner,…

Do People Change?

Because there is so much personal anguish, unhappiness, and human mental and physical suffering in the world, many people often wonder how they might personally change to find happiness, contentment,…

Trinity’s Shadow

I sit here in the silence of the awakening dawn’s stillness stunned by the realization that I exist.  I wonder why.  It is my birthday.  The first rays of the…

There Is No Escape From Telling

By the lake’s lapping shore above the town and the railroad tracks, my wife and I stopped and marveled, struck stone silent by two dazzling Baltimore Orioles, clawed together as…

The World Wants to Be Deceived

My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him.  It’s an old truth that has not changed a…

The Last Temptation of Things

Zero Waste Solution, Wareham, MA PHOTO: DAVID RATCLIFFE “I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.” – Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical…

It’s About Time

Isn’t it always? With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the…

On the Edge of a Nuclear Abyss

Two days after Russia attacked Ukraine and the day before Vladimir Putin put Russia on nuclear alert, I wrote a little article whose first sentence was: “Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but…

War or Images of War?

Experienced foreign policy analysts such as Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, and Pepe Escobar, while agreeing that the Biden administration is clearly guilty of provoking Russia over Ukraine, are divided over…

Nostalgic for the Future

Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations.  Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical…

The Houses of Dead and Crooked Souls

“A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.”      – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space There is a vast and growing gulf between the…

Opening the CIA’s Can of Worms

“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.  This is true.  The corporate mainstream media…

JFK, Allen Dulles, and Indonesia

A Review: JFK vs. Allen Dulles by Greg Poulgrain Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is…

Raskolnikov’s Dream Come True

“Something is happening here, But you don’t know what it is, Do you, Mr. Jones?” — Bob Dylan, Ballad of A Thin Man It’s hard. Life today seems like a dream,…

What Time Is It in Lockdown?

Here where I dwell in the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice has just occurred. The darkest day of the year in a dark year. A few days ago was also…

To Rebel Against Necessity and More

“Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world, which operates on the basis of necessity.  The laws of necessity are as unexceptional as the laws of gravitation. …

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