Authors Electric

  Faustus (to Mephistophilis): First will I question with thee about hell. Tell me where is the place that men call hell?   -- <*> -- IRAN ATTACK ISRAEL LAUNCHES MISSILES AT HEZBOLLAH THE HOLOCAUST   -- <*> -- Mephistophilis:   Under the heavens. Faustus: Ay, but whereabouts?  -- <*> -- TRUMP: ATTACKS ON IRAN TO CONTINUE... NOT EVERYONE BORN IN BRITAIN IS BRITISH, SAYS REFORM CANDIDATE   UK ALLOWS BRITISH BASES FOR STRIKES AGAINST IRAN -- <*> -- Mephistophilis: Within the bowels of these elements Where we are tortured and remain forever. Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place: for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be...   Faustus:  Come, I think hell's a fable.  -- <*> -- TRUMP PROMISES: "I'M NOT GOING TO START WARS, I'M GOING TO STOP WARS." [OCT 2025]   TRUMP SAYS MORE DEATHS OF US TROOPS LIKELY RESCUERS DESPERATELY SEARCH THROUGH RUBBLE OF SCHOOL ...

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...

My youngest daughter, Zoë, came into this world in May, 1990, less than a year after the Berlin Wall came down. And by 1991, the Soviet Union had dissolved, ending the Cold War. "How lucky for you, my wee one," I said to her between spoonfuls of apple sauce. "You and your sisters will live free from the threat of nuclear annihilation that your mama and papa have known since they were babes!" What soaring potentials would thus be freed for their millennial generation, I thought! Little Zoë must have been the wiser right off the bat. One sign: my post-Cold-War child had no trouble getting the dark humour of Dr. Strangelove when she saw it as a pre-adolescent. I maintain, however, that I wasn't wrong about our millennials' potential. They have continued to amaze me with their accomplishments and character through these years. But how wrong I was about the threat, as we now see more clearly than ever on this first week and the second month of 2022. perhaps our ...

Being an autodidact, I was not aware until a few weeks ago that Charles Dickens had written five Christmas novellas in the 1840s, not just " A Christmas Carol " - all, he averred, with "a strong moral message."  Most UK schoolchildren probably know the other four as " The Chimes ," " The Cricket on the Hearth, " " The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain " and " The Battle of Life ." Each of them delivers, as Dickens put it, "a strong moral message" and all but the last come with supernatural twist. I came across this jolly factoid cluster while researching an idea for a sequel to my own Christmas novella: " Milagro on 34th Avenue ." That 2015 novella, about which I've written here previously , gives homage to my favourite Christmas movie - Miracle on 34th Street (particularly the 1947 original with Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara and little Natalie Wood, directed by playwright George Seaton). I ...

Yogi Berra's 1998 book. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it," my favourite among the many koan-like paradoxical malapropisms for which the legendary New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra is famous. Here we are today, November 3, 2020 at such a paradoxical fork, which we have no choice but to take. It just happens to be my turn in the rotation of esteemed, Authors Electric members to post my blog on the third of each month, this time, falling on U.S. Presidential election day. We won't know its fateful results as of this posting, not until very late in this day, perhaps not for days, weeks, even months to follow. But a mighty fork it is! This is one of those days in which the cliche that "nothing will be the same after this" is for real. Today marks one of those divides whose gravity you just can't exaggerate: The end of the American republic? Possibly. Like the day Julius Caesar declared himself dictator of the 500-year-old Roman Republic? The the...

Taking out the garbage the other day, I noticed that our condo building's back-alley trash bin was nearly full. That was unusual for a Thursday afternoon. Our city sanitation crews - AKA, essential COVID-19 frontline workers - pick up punctually every Thursday morning. Oh well, I thought. Another dislocation of the Great 2020 Pandemic Shutdown. Imagine my surprise the following morning when checked the weather forecast online and saw that it was Wednesday! I had either overslept through five days or - as proved the case - I had zoned-out all of Tuesday thinking that it was Thursday! "I've just gained two days," I told my inamorata, Eleanor , who just rolled her eyes. "Another quarantine silver lining!" I declared. "Now I have an extra 48 hours to procrastinate on writing my AE blog post!" Am I being sarcastic? Rod Serling could have turned my experience into a Twilight Zone episode. But you could do that with almost anything nowadays. ( ...