Dinner parties were quite the thing back in the ‘80s. Women were entering corporate jobs en masse and medical honchos were trumpeting the dubious notion that wine was the new health elixir. Bottoms up! We…
Posts published in “Essays”
"Stealing From the Rich: The Home-Stake Oil Swindle" by David C. McClintick (Evans, 1977) recounts how a Tulsa, Oklahoma lawyer named Robert Trippet masterminded the most lucrative Ponzi scheme of the 20th century. (Bernie Madoff…
The news that Silicon Valley titans have quietly purchased over 50,000 rural acres in Solano County to build a new city called California Forever has gripped public attention since it appears to offer a way…
Gallup, N.M. April, 2001— Drive across the United States, mostly on Interstate 40, and you have plenty of time to listen to the radio. Even more time than usual if, to take my own situation,…
Sacco and Vanzetti were not the most notorious inmates in Charlestown Prison in the summer of 1927. That distinction belonged to a fellow immigrant who had rather faded from the news but whose name has,…
Many US citizens who want to join the Armed Services are too overweight or too poorly educated to qualify. (Eighth-grade level math and reading skills are required.) To meet its recruiting goals, in 2022 the…
In American academic institutions it is now common practice, though by no means universal, to begin conferences, convocations, and even the occasional concert—though not yet, in my experience, sporting events—with land acknowledgements. These lay out…