Dispatches from Vilnius

Orwell saving a puppy during the Spanish Civil War It is 30 years after Orwell's good bad back 1984 and the world hasn't exactly come to the dire state, which many felt Orwell "predicted" like some latter-day Nostradamus, taking this novel at face value.  It seems few have read his other books, like Homage to Catalonia , or his essays, which clearly outline a man who firmly adopted progressive causes.  Instead, there are many who somehow see him in the same vein as Ayn Rand and have adopted him as an ardent anti-Communist and neoconservative like themselves. I say this because Orwell pops up a lot in conservative media.  Here is a writer for Breitbart using Orwell to defend the conservative view that the current mainstream media is state-friendly and is used to "reinforce the Democratic Party line."  A view reinforced by the conservative pundits at Fox News, the most popular news channel in America.  This writer sees the scandals that have engulfed N...

It's like the hangover that just won't go away.  The GOP once again threatens to take control of the Senate, judging from the latest polls, which can only mean total chaos.  Even Punch-Drunk Mitch, who at one point was given up as roadkill, has surged in the polls and looks like he may very well be Senate Majority Leader if the Republicans can steal 6 seats from the Democrats. What's worse is that we never have been able to shake off the Bush years, with things looking very much the same in Iraq as they did 6 years ago.  Sure, the economy has improved, but there is the malingering scent of recession that leaves most Americans feeling just as nauseous now as they were back in 2008, according to the infamous polls anyway. America has become a nation of polls.  There seems to be a poll for everything, including ranking conspiracy theories.  We just can't seem to get over our fears no matter how hard we try.  This is due in large part to the barrage...

I often wondered if Neil Young took the title of this album from Nevil Shute's 1957 book, set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse.  This album has the same post-apocalyptic feeling as Neil and friends got high on "honey slides" and sang of lost friends, loves and an impending sense of doom, as evoked in his " Revolution Blues " which notes his brief association with Charles Manson, which he mentions in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace . Neil opts for a casual tone in his book, moving back and forth in time in his first effort at penning his thoughts in prose.  He notes that it was his father, a Canadian journalist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, who told him to write each day, so what you get is a journal of moments arrived at in a haphazard way befitting his nature.  I've been sharing passages with my son, who has become a big Neil Young fan himself, grooving out to his hardest stuff with Crazy Horse, like Arc-Weld .  I particularly enjoy ...

A football team struggles for two games on the field and all the sudden there's a "racial divide" in the locker room.  Not between whites and blacks, mind you, but between blacks.  According to Mike Freeman, an NFL sportswriter, Russell Wilson, the heralded young quarterback, "isn't black enough."  Freeman couches his own opinion in several interviews he claimed he had with Seahawks' players, not naming one of them.  This story was quickly picked up by the media and given veracity by other sports commentators, notably that of Charles Barkley , who as expected used the incident to tell of his own struggles within the black community.  Of course, Seahawk players denied this, but Wilson had the best retort, "I'm just an intelligent well-spoken male." It must have been a pretty slow Monday around the NFL, if this is the best sportswriters and commentators could come up with to explain Seattle's "leadership crisis," but ...

Looking at the map of Nevada, it must have been  Jarbridge I tried to find late one summer in 1988 or 89, taking an old logging road off the highway in Idaho, and working my way into the mountains of the Humboldt National Forest.  According to a story I had read, if you could find your way into the town you would get free lodging.   Unfortunately, the road became impassable after a certain point and I was forced to turn back.  I was afraid I would break one of the axles on my long-bed Ford Ranger.  I probably took the wrong approach. Nevada is an amazing state.  I've covered quite a bit of it on my travels and was only disappointed this one time, at myself mostly.  I love tracking down these old mining towns and Nevada has many that are much easier to find.  The territory was initially part of Utah, until the Comstock Lode changed the map.  Virginia City, which figures heavily into tales of the Old West, became the epicenter of this ...

The Steelers looked more like a swarm of bees on Sunday as they laid waste to the Indianapolis Colts in their "throwback" uniforms from the 1930s.  Big Ben had a big day throwing for over 500 yards in route to a 51-34 rout. The Steelers were known as the Pirates back in 1938 and were led by quarterback Byron "Whizzer" White .  Art Rooney spent a ton of money in his day to get the All-American out of the University of Colorado.  Pittsburgh was struggling and needed a big name player.  White did not disappoint, but the Pirates struggled with another losing season.  Seems like White saw this franchise was going nowhere, and decided to take advantage of his Rhodes scholarship and study in Oxford.  He came back to play with the Detroit Lions for three seasons, leading the league in rushing all three years, before enlisting in the military. When he came back from the war, he chose law school over football, graduating from Yale magna cum laude in 1946. ...

Recently, Stephen Colbert had fun with " Closet Republicans ," those who consider themselves Independent, like "Papa Bear" O'Reilly, but vote Republican.  Looking at this breakdown of voters from the 2012 election, at least 50 per cent of so-called Independents voted for Romney, while 45% voted for Obama.  The other 5% went elsewhere. It's hip to be an Independent.  Linda Killian identifies at least 4 types of Independent voters.  She has fun with monikers, tabbing The Facebook Generation and Starbuck Moms and Dads , which you could probably lump into a group of iVoters, with their affinity for iphones and ipads.   One assumes these iVoters to be largely Democratic, but probably also voted for independent candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Her other two types were NPR Republicans , who watch NPR and still affiliate themselves with Nelson Rockefeller. This must be a dying breed, as there are probably very few left who know who he wa...

Just when I thought it was safe to watch the History Channel, along comes a special on "decoding" the dollar bill with the theory that the Illuminati not only influenced the design of the dollar bill but have a secret hand in our politics ever since they were first formed in 1776.  It reminds me of those old "In Search Of" television programs hosted by Leonard Nimoy that lent credibility to every half-baked theory imaginable.  Now it seems, we have the History Channel. Decoding the Past ran from 2005-2011, but remains in syndication.  This episode dates from 2006.  The producers seem mostly interested in the paranormal, but also have an obsession for "secret societies."  I thought one of the most amusing aspects of " The Secret of the Dollar Bill " was the attempt to link the Illuminati with the Founding Fathers by inferring that there was correspondence between Adam Weishaupt, the founder of this group, and Benjamin Franklin.  Weishaupt a...

It's either going to be a huge victory for the Republicans are a major disappointment, as predictions now have the GOP with as many as 55 seats in the Senate.  It is hard to imagine a 10-seat turnover, but the Democrats left big openings with so many retirements , including Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Max Baucus in Montana.  States not exactly friendly to Democrats.  All though, I will be glad to see Baucus go, as he was no friend to Democrats either, having tried to kill the Affordable Care Act in committee back in 2009, and was rewarded for his efforts by being named Ambassador to China. This was apparently an attempt to give the Democrats a better chance of holding onto the Montana seat by having the Democratic governor appoint a replacement prior to the scheduled election.  Unfortunately, the little slight-of-hand gesture failed when John Walsh, the Democrat who took Baucus's seat, was run out of the election over p...

It's amazing how some things withstand the test of time like the safety razor.  Despite all the great technological improvement, many of which King Camp Gillette imagined himself in The Human Drift , the safety razor is as valued today as it was when Gillette patented it in 1880. I came across a little biography  of Gillette some years back and was amazed to learn of the man behind the razor, whose brand name still exists on safety blades today.  He had imagined a utopia, which he called Metropolis on the site of Niagara Falls designed to house millions and using the hydro-power to generate electricity.  It is very classical in inspiration, no doubt taken from the ideas of Etienne-Louis Boullee, who had imagined a  similar structure  a hundred years before in his Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton. However, other instruments haven't fared so well, like the slide rule, which Newton would have used himself over 300 years ago.  It's an amazing de...

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909...

Probably the most repellent of the Republican governors elected in 2010 is Sam Brownback.  He rode the Tea Party wagon into Topeka and has literally split the state in two with his divisive policies that have even led to Republican defections, which Jessica Williams has fun skewering in this segment, The Kansas Experiment . Brownback combines supply-side economics with religious social conservatism in a way only a teabagger could do, and not surprisingly remains a darling in the TP, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the economic experiment he undertook two years ago by slashing taxes in an effort to attract new businesses and encourage existing Kansas businesses to hire more employees.  The result has been a resounding failure . Of course, none of us should be surprised.  Businesses typically pocket their tax cuts unless there is an impelling reason for them to take on new employees.  Brownback offered none.  Again, no surprise, because I doubt o...

So now we have "Sizzle History," a term apparently coined by USA Today.  Karen Abbott is in search of the salacious side of American history, offering up such juicy morsels as Gypsy Rose Lee, the brothels of Chicago, and now transgender soldiers and undercover women spies during the Civil War.  Granted, these are all interesting subjects, but it seems Abbott is relying more on where your imagination takes you than what history uncovers in these tales of the seamy side of American history. I've had my fill of journalists turned armchair historians.  It is rare that one of the books offers anything new in the way of history or interpretation.  What they seek out is the sensational and package it in a way to attract readers, more often using secondary sources.  We have Bill O'Reilly (although it is hard to think of him as a journalist, much less historian) pitching his latest "murder mystery" in Killing Patton , which should be filed under fantasy but i...

The "Ebola Panic" is playing out like some bad made-for-television movie of the 70s.  A scare generated for no other purpose than to influence this year's midterms, as conservative pundits have been attracted to the outbreak like proverbial flies to shit, but mainstream pundits also hover around this faux pile of fears like fruit flies, fighting for their little piece of the action. Of course, it doesn't help when the Center for Disease Control (CDC) starts questioning itself and rushes an infected nurse at the 11th hour to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to be given special treatment she apparently couldn't get in Dallas.  The given was a lack of proper hazmat suits in Dallas.  Nina Pham is reportedly in good condition. However, the sudden move was covered like O.J. Simpson's slow moving "getaway" on television, with commentary every step of the way, which makes you wonder if these news channels don't have anyth...

A new pledge just like the old one, 2010 2010 played out like a repeat of 1994, replete with a " Pledge to America ."  In fact, this pledge was such a pathetic rehashing of Newt's 1994 "Contract" that you couldn't possibly believe people would fall for it, but they did.  It seemed as if the origins of the 2008 banking crisis had been erased from voters' memories and they were holding the Democrats personally responsible for the horrible economy. Once again, the Democrats had allowed the Republicans to set the narrative.  Add to that a seemingly new force in politics -- the Tea Party -- which had risen to the fore by questioning Obama's birth certificate, among other crazy things, and threatened to hold Republicans accountable to religious conservative values by challenging them in the primaries.  It was like some Fox comedy show from the 90s.  It was hard to imagine any of this was real, but real it was, and Tea Party candidates were winning Re...

2007 looked much brighter with the Democrats back in control of Congress.  The big turnover in the House of Representatives showed that Democrats could still campaign on the local and regional level, but now we saw campaigns tailor made for the different regions of the country.  It was difficult to see how Nancy Pelosi , the new Speaker of the House, was going to hold this new majority together, but she seemed up for the challenge. It was easy enough to rally around Hurricane Katrina, which had devastated the Gulf Coast.  The many deaths and slow recovery hurt the Bush administration, which appeared ill-equipped to handle the crisis.  Americans saw for the first time how badly federal domestic programs had been gutted.  The Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) had been rolled into Homeland Security and didn't have the funding to deal with the crisis on the ground.  As a result, many New Orleans residents needlessly died, and horrible condi...