Authors Electric

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...

Working like dogs, w/Nibblick, & MJain Liars want to eat my neighborhood again. Their threat is clearer and more immediate this time. With deadlocked polls putting him in short-fingered reach of the U.S. Presidency again, Hair Hitler vows to round up tens of millions of people - immigrants and anyone opposing him he can "denaturalize" - and put them in concentration camps. Even Demagogue Don admits his political pogrom - involving the military, and local police - would be a blood-soaked affair. But, like the purges of Stalin and other genocidal strongmen Trump adulates - purges would aim at terrorizing the populace and consolidating dictatorial power for him and his cronies. Chicago does El Grito (Sun Times) It's not politics. It's personal. Tumpistas have put my blended family and my mixed neighborhood in their  orange crosshairs, just as they did during Trump's first White House term, There can only be one response. Nope! We're not going back! In the wee...

    Image credit:   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frost_patterns_2.jpg When I was young our house was freezing in winter -- literally. There used to be ice on the inside of the windows. This was because we lived in a council house built in 1954 which, although well appointed for its time, had no insulation, no central heating and only single-glazed windows. In winter, the heating was a fire in the living-room which didn't even heat that room very well. (The part of you nearest the fire was roasted; the part of you furthest away was cold.) There was a fire-grate in the front-room, but it was hardly ever used. The upstairs rooms had no heating and the cold up there could be -- often was -- bitter . We lived, as I still do, on top of the Rowley Hills. My Dad often observed that there was no higher point between us and the Urals and the east wind blew to us straight from Siberia. Going straight through us, of course, not bothering to go round. But Jack Frost use...

Last week after much back-and-forth, I finally got the okay from Polar HQ to interview The Elf Himself. I wasn't going to complain about being offered this primo "get" at the last minute, what with December here and lights already strung everywhere. I would like to think that I got the twinkle-and-nod because the Jolly Red One wanted to meet the author of Milagro on 34th Street . I even fantasized that might give me an award for my past service as a "real bearded," department-store Santa. No dice, however. The reality, I suspect, was that Polar PR had called on me as a substitute after a celebrity television interviewer dropped out due to sexual misconduct charges. Can't have Santa's name mixed up in all that. "Unseasonably warm," Kringle muttered, fiddling with a thermostat as I was escorted into his cluttered workshop office by a bony, baleful, elf from IT, who obviously didn't like the task. Santa extended a chubby white-gloved hand...

              A Merry Christmas  and a Prosperous New Year  to all our readers!           But it's Christmas Day and you want something a little different from the usual blog.           So I offer you this wintery tale...Or, at least, its first chapter.  ******************************************************** ******************************************* Ghost Dance Or, The Czar's Black Angel 'Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?' Chapter 1       In a place far distant from where you are now grows an oak tree by a lake.         Round the oak's trunk is a chain of golden links.         Tethered to the chain is a learned cat, and this most learned of all cats ...