August 21st, 2021
By Ed Raymond
Why Does the Sign by the Tallahatchie Bridge Have to Be Bulletproof?
I had Ben Eveslage for chemistry and physics at Little Falls High School. With his wild gray hair and on-tip-nose glasses, he looked like the mad scientist, and if you didn’t answer his questions precisely, he would give that “Don’t be so damn stupid” look -- and then grin. Science was very important to him and he passed science on.
Nobel Prize for Science winner Swiss Henrich…
August 17th, 2021
By Ed Raymond fargogadfly@gmail.com
19 August 2021
Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege
Shubham Chandra’s father, a New York City cardiologist, died of COVID-19 in his hospital after spending seven months in one of its beds.
Shubham quit his well-paying job in a media startup to manage the insurance coverage and the hundreds of medical bills. He spent his mornings analyzing the charges on new bills…
August 8th, 2021
By Ed Raymond
There’s Nothing but Trouble in the City on the Potomac
When “The Chosen One,” Donald “Jesus” Trump, arrived at the city on the Potomac River in 2017 to swindle the “losers” for at least for four years and maybe forever, his ascent to attack and loot the treasury of the United States was sure to cause trouble. When trouble is around, I always think of the lines “Ya Got Trouble” in that great musical The Music Man:
Except in this case…
August 2nd, 2021
By Ed Raymond
fargogadfly@gmail.com
05 August 2021
Sometimes Facts Lead to Theories. Sometimes They Lead to More Facts.
On 21 May 1946, veteran Canadian physicist and chemist Louis Slotin, working in our Manhattan Project in New York, was experimenting with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. Pushing the cores together with a screwdriver in one hand, it slipped in his hand and started a fission nuclear reaction, releasing a burst of hard radiation. He died…
July 26th, 2021
Ed Raymond
29 July 2021
This Is About the Religious-Rich-QAnon-White Supremacist-Trumplican Cult
There are hundreds of thousands of cults in countries and societies around the world that have played or are playing a role in the formation or disintegration of a group or government. Therefore, the definition of a cult has to be quite broad: A cult is a group of people with extreme dedication to a certain leader or sets of beliefs that are often viewed as odd by others,…
July 18th, 2021
Ed Raymond
22 July 2021
Bosom Buddies: Genghis and Bernie
In the 13th Century Genghis Khan of Mongolia ruled the largest empire the world has ever seen: from the Pacific Ocean to the borders of Europe and from Northern Siberia to Southern Persia. His government, known as The Golden Horde, took in many countries, including present-day China, Mongolia, Russia, Afghanistan, Persia, Hungary, Turkey, and all of Central Asia.
To govern it well, Genghis established the…
July 11th, 2021
By Ed Raymond
15 July 2021
Looking Backward: 1887 to Brave New World, 632 After Ford
We currently have three billionaires spending billions to leave planet Earth.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the richest man in the world, will soon take a ride on his Blue Origin New Shepherd rocket with a passenger who paid $28 million to sit beside him. Jeff is working on putting huge cylindrical rings in space where millions of Earthians will live after escaping grilling on a hot planet.…
July 4th, 2021
by Ed Raymond
08 July 2021
Miranda Was Wrong: We Are Terribly Short Of ‘Goodly Creatures’
Before I attack God, Catholics, evangelical Christians, and Trumplicans, I’ve got to attack the Supreme Court. The Court voted 8-1 that a foul-mouthed bratty teenaged cheerleader, with parents who want be “friends” instead of parents, had had her First Amendment rights violated.
She had been suspended from school for using Trumpian profane language against teachers,…
June 27th, 2021
by Ed Raymond
01 July 2021
HecKKK, There’s No Racism in the Divided States of AmeriKa!
Although I lived on Highway 27, four miles east of Little Falls, for my first 18 years, I didn’t learn until I was 89 that HW 27 actually was constructed on top of an Indian trail that had been used by Minnesota tribes for thousands of years.
Isn’t it amazing that we probably learn something about our history every day? I played cowboys and Indians in the hills near it, walked…
June 20th, 2021
by Ed Raymond
24 June 2021
When Will Money Talk for the Very Last Time?
I have never been a country music fan, but I have been a country “poet” fan for decades. As a vocalist, I have sung solos, in duets, trios, in male and mixed quartets, in madrigals, and in church, high school, and college choirs. I also sang in a mixed quartet called the Winter Wonderland Quartet and traveled for a year in a show WCCO’s Cedric Adams put together with Miss America Bebe Shopp…
By Josette Ciceronunapologeticallyanxiousme@gmail.com What does it mean to truly live in a community —or should I say, among community? It’s a question I have been wrestling with since I moved to Fargo-Moorhead in February 2022.…