February 2008 Archives

But this is all I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling

Night Letter to the Reader

He wrote: "I looked at the ground, frost-white, the grass tufts frozen, the soil hard and uneven. I wondered if it is better to die on a warm, bright day among friends, or on a day when even the weather is your enemy. I turned around and looked down into the valley. The mist still hung in the valley, but it was starting to take on a brassy tint from the sun beginning to work through it. I could make out three white farm buildings on the valley floor, a little yellowed now from the weak sunlight, and I could envision this, in the spring a pleasant valley. This view I see now, I said to myself, will be the last thing their eyes will ever see."

 "The night Bummy fought Fritzie Zivic in the Garden and Zivic started giving him the business and Bummy hit Zivic low maybe thirty times and kicked the referee, they wanted to hang him for it," Mr. Heinz wrote. "The night those four guys came into Dudy's bar and tried the same thing, only with rods, Bummy went nuts again. He flattened the first one and then they shot him, and everybody read about it, and how Bummy fought guns with only his left hook and died lying in the rain in front of the place, they all said that was really something and you sure had to give him credit at that."

Times obit.

Buckley vs Chomsky

Polite, educated and lots of little digs from everyone concerned. 

His debate with Gore Vidal:

Remember when Mitt Romney said he was going to protect every job in Michigan. Here's why that was a silly claim:

Worker retraining always seems like the kind of thing candidates talk about but which voters never really much want. Wait, you want me to go back to school? I'm busy enough what with my kids, home improvements, busying myself getting into deeper and deeper debt, etc. But what if corporations partnered with the federal government to provide inducements to retrain? It would probably cost too much but the voices in this piece suggest you might actually get people to retrain.