I watched a fair amount of the mainstream media coverage of the first anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, and was deeply troubled by much of what I heard and saw. I had hoped that there…
Posts published in “Essays”
Whatever it is these days, it’s connected with immigration. The West Nile virus is suspected of imperiling the future of any number of birds and mammals; milfoil, an immigrant grass from distant shores, is threatening…
While the country celebrates (if that's not too inappropriate a word) the anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing, one of the television stations heads its broadcast “America On Alert” and the whole country holds…
This summer’s extraordinary rescue of nine trapped Pennsylvania coal-miners verged on miraculous. Scarcely noted was the hellish nature of everyday conditions below. Those who work down there seldom live long, or well. Like many horrific…
I’ll admit I was down-and-out. I was borderline Fun Bunch. But these things are subjective. One man’s pith is another’s drivel. I was in the Humboldt Squeeze: watching my job dry up quicker than the…
I felt like blaming someone when, like millions of other Americans, I took a WorldCom bath. How, I asked my wife, could the company that owns MCI, one of the world’s telecommunication giants, declare bankruptcy?…
Fighting wildland fires for a living is a real good way to get yourself hurt or killed, and make damn little money in the process. I have often wondered what would make a person literally…
Last June, Adam Jernee died from acute lymphocytic leukemia, a remorselessly fast-moving cancer of the blood. He was eight-years old and had fought the cancer for more than two years of his short life. Adam…
“Never has a holocaust been carried out so impersonally.”
In his 2000 presidential campaign, Joel Kovel ran to the left of Ralph Nader. Just as Nader’s campaign was purely symbolic in the context of money-driven politics, Kovel could barely manage a whisper against the roaring backdrop of Green Party enthusiasm for Public Citizen #1.