Authors Electric

Umberto Tosi, New Year's Eve, 2026 "Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph, " wrote  Thomas Paine to George Washington in the darkest days of the American Revolution when the British Empire seemed invincible.  Mad King Donald-abused  America needs more Thomas Paines right now.  " These are the times that try men's souls," Paine wrote. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."  George Washington , then commander in chief of a demoralized, underfunded Continental Army promptly  had Paine's  The American Crisis   pamphlet, read aloud to them. Thomas Paine-Laurent Davos By the 1990s, when my youngest daughter took her first steps, I blessed the stars that seemed to finally give her generation respite from...

Civics assignment It's not easy being an American metropolis these days - besieged by neofascist nativist, hassled by hatemongers, lied about, loathed, baited while its people struggle to live up to challenging dreams of opportunity, freedom, enterprise, and cosmopolitanism. We urbanites visualize of our hometowns as centers of art, technology, education, science, architecture, and enterprise. Meanwhile, the Trump 2.0 demagogues recently returned to Washington DC have made us their convenient targets again, just as they did in 2016. Last time, they separated immigrant families and jailed children in detention camps. The cruelty was not accidental. It was the goal. This time Trump's goons are apparently taking special aim as U.S. schoolchildren. As if it's not enough that American kids and their teachers have been exposed to mass shootings for decades thanks to the political clout of right-wing gun fanatics and gun makers. Now, less than a month into Trump 2.0 our kids worry...

Yellowhammer The other day - maybe due to my advanced age, or upon hearing that I've been writing a memoir - a friend asked me how I would choose to come back in the next life, if there is one.  "As a busker," I responded. I didn't give my answer much thought, except that I've always liked street performers. "Maybe as a great orchestra conductor, like Toscanini, maybe a pianist too, or Arthur Fiedler . My mother took me to see the legendary Fiedler lead the Boston Pops at the Shell in the summer of 1941 beside the Charles River. I recall the outdoor spectacle vividly though the mists of early memories. After that, I took to conducting radio music with a yellow pencil. One of my aunts gave me a baton, real or perhaps a toy one.  Beethoven  That began my childhood busking career. Housing was scarce. For a while, my parents and I lived at the house of my paternal grandparents in the then toney, Boston district of Brighton. It was a spacious three-floor affair fo...

Keeping a list... Ho, ho, not to worry. Kris Kringle will still bring gifts for children everywhere. But I hate to report that we adults in America have made this year's naughty list in blackest ink. A majority of us will find a lump of coal in our Christmas stockings. The lump will be orange, slimy and smell bad and be called a Trump. I'll not name names. You know who you are, and so does this season's frowny Father Christmas.  It's not party politics or the finer points of trade that have our Elf-in-Chief in a snit this Christmas. It's the summary, mass roundups of aliens that our doddering Don has already set in motion. Like under his first term, it includes separation of families and incarceration of children - by the millions this time. Hate based cruelty is not a byproduct here. It is the self-professed point. I t doesn't take an all-knowing Santa to recognize this pogrom for what it is - persecution, with holocaust looming.  Christmas celebrates the birth...