Gadfly

A Man Who Had Plenty Under His Hat

September 9th, 2015

The obituary of Dr. Oliver Sacks, 82, who died on August 30, appeared on the front pages of national newspapers, with a photo of him holding a three-pound human brain in one hand.

That brain has over one trillion cells, with a 100 billion of them acting as neurons linking up millions of networks that give us intelligence, creativity, emotion, consciousness, and memory. If the wrinkles in the cortex could be ironed out, it would cover a very large office desk.

Known as the poet…

Corporate Cultism

September 3rd, 2015

Corporate cults and the industrial revolution: it ain’t over until it’s really over

Business and labor have been battling each other since the invention of the cotton gin and the loom revolutionized the textile and clothing business in England and America in the early 19th Century.

In a very short period of time steam engines running complex machinery made the factory floor a hellish place to work in extremely poor lighting. Machines were not fenced in, so moving parts often injured…

Downstream or Upstream?

August 26th, 2015

Whatever happened to Wendell Berry’s adage about being downstream or upstream?

As a farm kid I learned early that it’s always wise to stay upstream from the herd when they are near or in a creek on a hot day. When belly deep in water the tail always goes up when the head goes down for a drink.

Wendell Berry is an 81-year-old farmer-poet-essayist with the message that we humans must live in harmony with the natural rhythms of the earth or perish. He believes that small-scale…

Buffalo Bill and Death

August 19th, 2015

photo by Sabrina Hornung

The dilemma of meeting Mister Death

Sometimes I wonder why this little poem by E.E. Cummings has stuck in my brain for over a half-century: “Buffalo Bill’s defunct … who used to ride … a watersmooth-silver stallion … and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat … Jesus he was a handsome man … and what I want to know is … how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mister Death?” Could be a very important question! This column is about death, so I am going to call on two experts, an…

Bruce and Caitlyn and Friends

August 12th, 2015

Esther Jenner, 89: “He’s A Very Good-Looking Woman. I Loved Him With All My Heart—And I Certainly Love Her With All My Heart.”

Some people have said that 89-year-old Esther, the mother of her 65-year-old daughter Caitlyn Jenner, screwed up her pronouns in making the above statements. I don’t think so. She was simply saying that her son Bruce is her son and now Caitlyn is her daughter---and that her child remains her child regardless of transgendering from male to female. I think…

Blue and Red States

August 5th, 2015

What’s Worse Than Being A Young Black Transgender Without Green In Red Religious Georgia?

In 2004 a young mulatto senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama gave an electrifying speech to the Democratic National Convention about the United States: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, and Asia America. There is a United States of America.”

In 2007 he…

Blue crayon

July 29th, 2015

From black space to bright blue earth: a fragile thin line

Astronaut Sally Ride, our first woman in space, spent time looking at earth as the space shuttle hurtled around the earth, entranced by a bright day turning into a dark night in a single orbit: “I saw the blackness of space, and then the bright blue Earth. And then it looked as if someone had taken a royal blue crayon and traced along Earth’s horizon. And then I realized that the blue line, that really thin royal blue line,…

Moral Capitalism

July 22nd, 2015

White Cotton, Brown Tobacco, Black Slavery--And Green Free Enterprise Dollars

Our ancestors didn’t wait long. Slavery started in Virginia in 1619 and was “legal” in all British colonies to provide labor for tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations in the Western Hemisphere. I guess if slavery is legal the property on which slaves work can be called plantations instead of slave labor camps.

I see Andy Peterson, CEO of the Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce, has the same…

Capitalist Fracketeering

July 15th, 2015

Capitalist Fracketeering: The Idea That Anything That Gets Between Them And A Dollar Is Bad

We all know what fracking means in the oil industry. It’s the process of injecting water and mysterious chemicals at high pressures so that the last drops of oil and gas are forced out of rocks and shale so it can be recovered and sold. Now the high pressures in fracking are being used to separate the last drop of economic blood from the middle-class before it disappears. Ian Martin of The…

God And Fingers

July 9th, 2015

Is This Why God Gave Us Fingers?

There is evidence that fork-like instruments were developed thousands of years ago to facilitate eating barbecue by the fireside. But 10 centuries ago Roman Catholic Saint Pietro Damiani said such instruments looked like the work of Satan, who was usually portrayed carrying a huge trident in his right hand. The Saint said: “God would not have given us fingers if he wanted us to use that instrument of Satan.” That marvelous gay Catholic Leonardo Da…