I’d Prefer Not To . . .

If you are someone who has been reading my blog off and on over the past years (I’ve been writing here since 2004!), you may have noticed my extended absence. I have a long list of reasons why I haven’t popped up here since early this year.

But rather than list all those reasons, […]

Monumental Instability, or War of the Memorials

Unmanned Drone (2022) by Kara Walker, a The Brick in East Hollywood, February 2026.

As if to underscore the barbaric, cruel madness of the attack on Iran—the clearest indication yet of the end of Pax Americana, the once painfully slow and now surprisingly rapid decline of US power and supremacy—we have the nation’s […]

Real Crimes and the Coming Violence

An alpine glacier as I flew towards Milan.

I just enjoyed a get-away to Europe for almost two weeks. I spent three days with Mona at her place in southern Switzerland where I hadn’t been for 20 years, and another three days in a small town in the Italian Alps with my old […]