Apparently, people who write titles for politico-military thrillers about nuclear brinksmanship find the language of The Star Spangled Banner just too good to resist. It must be the power of dark irony, to turn words of patriotic celebration into a warning for patriots. For example: Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 drama starring Burt Lancaster as a renegade air force … [Read more...]
Farewell to empire
For one of America's smallest states, Vermont has a lot to teach the rest of the country about living locally. It's always had the local democracy of the New England town meeting. Now Vermont is getting attention for a thriving local food economy of small farms, great farmers markets and food entrepreneurs exporting everything from organic seeds to local tofu. And in the … [Read more...]
Holidays as a benchmark
Another holiday season is behind us. As I reflect on mine, I get a strong sense that holidays can be seen as a sort of benchmark. We tend to remember certain traditions and how they played out throughout the years. On needles and pins Take the Christmas tree, for example. Let’s face it, there's nothing that can bring out the worst in any of us than the tree. Remember the … [Read more...]
Four things that were better in 1899
It's no accident that the 1960 film adaptation of The Time Machine opens with host HG Wells welcoming four friends to a dinner party in London on January 5, 1900 to recount events that had occurred since he last met them, on New Year's Eve, 1899. What year could be more symbolic of the end of an era, for good or ill, than 1899? Since Americans worship at the altar of … [Read more...]
Will 2013 be the year globalization died?
In The Campaign, last year's hilarious, potty-mouthed political romp with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, the Motch brothers (modeled of course on the Koch brothers) shovel piles of cash onto the campaign of Galifianakis's character Marty. Why? They want to build factories in his North Carolina congressional district, where they will employ Chinese workers at Chinese … [Read more...]