Bends Toward Justice

   I know I initially wrote this around 2016 or 17, when it was part (a smaller part than I was devoting to it) of my job to write sample essays for students. If I were writing on related issues today, I’d surely devote this kind of attention or more to the murders of US citizens by ICE and Border Patrol agents, the extrajudicial rendition of legal immigrants to third countries, the torture, rape, and inhumane conditions in detention facilities, and the war crimes our military is committing near Central America. It’s not even a small part of my job anymore, and plenty of people with actual audiences are writing well about those things, as millions ignore them. People who might read what I’d add already agree. We can put a stop to that murderous rampage by voting for Democrats for several election cycles. Thinking about the death penalty compassionately is a challenge because those convicted are probably (more on that later) guilty of a heinous crime, and their victims and t...

  Why do we celebrate Independence Day and not Constitution Day? Some thoughts from 2020: Independence Day Maybe it is just me, but the recent unrest about the systemic racism still afflicting our country and the dearth of mass celebrations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, have inspired a more introspective view of Independence Day. We don’t think enough about it, but we aren’t celebrating the day our country was founded, our flag adopted, our Constitution written, or even our independence won. We are celebrating the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted . Most of the Declaration is devoted to giving reasons why the colonies felt justified in dissolving our “political bands” with Great Britain. However, the reasons are given in a philosophical context that is remarkable. At a time when most countries were ruled by people who claimed to do it by divine right, or simply did it by force, our Declaration set out a statement of purpose and justification: that all men...

 Originally written in June 2020.  Sadly, I am confident the situation is no better, also that the people I thought I might convince are impervious to facts and reason. Recently, in social media discussions arising from police executions of black Americans, friends of mine have expressed ideas that seem to reflect a belief that racism doesn’t exist.  Briefly, what follows is an attempt to factually establish the existence of systemic racism in the United States. Since the events inspiring outrage lately were encounters with police, let’s start there. Encounters with Police Black drivers are more likely to be stopped by the police, and three times more likely to have their car searched.  They are arrested for drug-related offenses at twice the rate despite the fact that whites use drugs at comparable rates.   Once arrested, blacks are more likely to be jailed awaiting trial, probably due to poverty.  This disrupts their family and work life, may impede ...

 Here's a 2019 post from the old blog when we were trying to get a gig writing about beer and breweries.  The craft beer industry has gotten more commercial, but the points are still valid. Art vs. Commerce Discussed in this post: Beer names and label information, with examples from Rising TIde Mast Landing Goodfire Bissell Brothers Rowley Farmhouse Ales A couple friends (who will go nameless since they spoke casually, not for publication) have a financial stake in one of the local breweries.  In discussion they complained about the owner-brewer neglecting commerce in favor of art.  “He thinks if he brews good original beer people will just find it, drink it, and like it,” said one.  The other called the investment “a silly way to waste a quarter-million dollars.” Since the brewery is still operating after about a decade, I’m guessing that everyone is making their investment back, just that they’re sweating it all the time.   But that, as far as I can ...

 Hi Spirits, I used to write with my students, then I had a blog hosted on the Portland Maine Walking Tours website, and cowrote some magazine articles. A lot of that material is in my Google Drive taking up storage space. Putting it here so I can delete it there might just be an egotistical exercise; however, there have been occasions when I searched for information and found that my own writing was linked. So there may be a benefit to someone else. Here’s one written in 2018. These days it seems overly optimistic: Is War Inevitable? Perhaps humankind is doomed to always live with war.  Certainly when one reads Cicero’s claim that settling a dispute by discussion is civilized, while using physical force is characteristic of “the brute,” then ruminates on the slaughter of the crusades, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the atrocities in Darfur, etc., etc. ad nauseum, one cannot help but fear that war is an inevitable element of the human condition. However,...

Rereading this work, I recall how generous Dugan Murphy was (and he still is), and how equally generous and enthusiastic Bill Barry was.  Now my friend Herb Adams, then the merest acquaintance, has Barry's papers and is working on a book about Neal.  My excitement is rekindled.   No existing single work captures the multi-faceted genius of the man; most don't even do him justice in their area of focus.  The few words I have written are adequate to my self-assigned task, I hope; they don't come close to enumerating or explicating all his contributions to our culture.   Here's the conclusion:  John Neal Part Five: Portland In my first entry about John Neal, I called him a foundation stone of American culture.  I organized my evidence into explanations of his influence on literature, on art, and on progressive causes.  I also said I’d explain his role in bringing public gyms to the US, and “sneak in evidence that Neal’s fingerprints are all...

  Part Four: Progressive Causes Neal’s entry into the world of public intellectual debate and his espousal of feminism coincided.  In his autobiography, writing about a debate he participated in before he went to England, he writes about how he came to believe in women’s suffrage: “Take the best and most comprehensive definition of slavery, as you find it existing here, and you will be satisfied that one half of your whole white population -- that is, all your females, -- are born to slavery, that they live in slavery, and are dying in slavery…. They are taxed without representation.  They cannot hold office.  They are denied the right of suffrage.  All their earnings and savings, after marriage, belong to their husbands, or masters, who make the law.  They can neither acquire, hold, or transmit property, other than as their masters, the lawgivers, may prescribe (p. 50) After his return to Portland, feminism became the cause he devoted the most time and ene...