The Writer's Poke

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history.  She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process. 

  In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X.  It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether.  And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it.  So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants.  The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

Heather Cox Richardson is American Historian.  Before last week, I had never heard of her, but she apparently does a daily podcast -- average length about 12 minutes.  The April 18, 2025, edition was 26 minutes long, and it marked the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6bjnkOYUs Not surprisingly, when you listen to the Paul Revere story today, the present political situation echoes through. 1775 Boston is hard to imagine. It had a total population of 7,000. The British troops stationed there numbered 13,000.  While the patriots in Boston outnumbered loyalists, Richardson notes that the majority of Bostonians remained neutral. They just wanted to live their lives.  Overall, I liked this podcast, because it clearly and concisely presented the story of how Paul Revere and the colonial patriots stood up to the tyranny of the King. They did what they could, not because they thought they were going to change the...

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue.  On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there.  For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others.  First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.  He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief.  2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...

Sandra Cisneros -- not an author I've read much of, but she's thought highly of in writing circles, and under the current political climate, I feel like I should be reading her and more authors like her. Not that literature should be politicized and part of the culture wars, but it is. And if I have to pick a side, I will side with Cisneros. She's a chingona, or roughly translated, a "bad ass."  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sandra-cisneros-chingona-definition_n_59ae10ade4b0dfaafcf2030b I think we typically do want to "read" authors from different backgrounds differently. If I'm reading Raymond Carver, it's not natural for me to think about his background or why he picks a certain theme or approach. But if I'm reading Cisneros, I find myself starting to think that way. Do you? It's 2025. Unfortunately, we live in a moment of time when if you're not a white man (and bring straight helps), you might be labeled as DEI or un-American or ...

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Chundering. Is that bad? It doesn't sound good. The base root of the word sounds like "thunder" and the "Chuh" sound at the beginning of the word sounds like "chuck." And that's what the word means -- to chunder is to vomit.  I'm not sure if I've run across this word before, but apparently it is an English word, just more commonly used in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom than the United States.  Who was doing the chundering? Space X just launched a billionaire and three astronauts into space, and they all experienced space sickness. The article didn't mention anything about chunder bags, but they must have some sort of chunder bag like they do in airplanes, right? It couldn't just be a small paper bag, though, could it? It would need to be a bag designed with "space-age anti-chunder technology." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/crypto-billionaire-and-3-private-astronauts-launched-to-space-then-the-ch...

Wednesday isn't a good night for a concert, but it's been maybe 8 years since I last saw the Birthday Massacre in concert. That show went on until 12:30 in the morning, and as best I remember, they played 21 songs. The concert went on for so long that Linda fell asleep and eventually made her exit back to the car. This show was shorter: 19 songs. It was over by 11:15, but people were already starting to head for the door by 10:30. Just a few, and then a few more, and so on. Did they really have to be somewhere else, or did they simply need to get to bed for an early morning? I like small concerts with bands that a ton of people don't necessarily know or like. The Fine Line has a capacity of maybe 600, and I'd say they almost had that. Most of the people were maybe in their 30s, but it's hard to tell. I did feel like one of the older people there. I basically found a post in the back and stood by it.  Great show. Glad I went. Glad I'm not too old to go to a conce...

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...

When someone does something repugnant or slimy, I often wonder: Who hurt you? With JD Vance, I've found myself thinking, "Bless his heart. He's just being Trump's bitch. I wonder who hurt him. Was he bullied much as a kid?"  I've read Hillbilly Elegy, but I don't remember much in it. Below are a few places where he mentions being bullied: "When I was younger, I was the new kid in town. And as I quickly learned, the new kid always gets bullied." (Chapter 1) "At school, I was constantly picked on, and I couldn’t understand why. My classmates would make fun of my clothes, the way I talked, and the way my mom acted." (Chapter 2) "I was a poor kid with a messy home life, and I became the target of constant teasing, and that made me even more ashamed of where I came from." (Chapter 3) "It’s hard to be proud of yourself when every kid in your class has more than you, and the people who tease you are just one reminder of your soc...

 When I was in Guatemala a few years ago, a guide said, "We're really proud of our bridge. It's the only one like it in the entire region." While it was a nice enough bridge, I felt jaded. We probably have a million bridges like that in the U.S., I thought.   But I'm sure that this bridge made life much easier for the people who lived in this region. Because that's what bridges do. They make life easier.  In the United States, we have 600,000 bridges. Some small, some big. They all serve the purpose of making life easier. What's involved in designing and building a bridge? How does a bridge go from imagination to reality?  1. People decide a bridge is needed.  2. Politicians agree, and the process begins -- funding, designing, building, and so on.  3. Once the bridge is built, it will still require maintenance -- more funding, monitoring, and so on.  4. A good bridge will probably last for decades.  Elon Musk's DOGE is tasked with cutting a $1 tri...

Eight years ago, I was putting together a GOP Principles Handbook. Why did I stop? And do the principles from 2017 apply to the political world in 2025, or are there a whole new set of principles? I'm guessing some of the old principles still apply. This week, for example, all GOPers were saying that it was a "mistake" that an Atlantic journalist was included on the Yemen warplans chat. In fact, in an interview with CNN, one Representation said, "It was a mistake," and when the reporter tried to ask a follow-up question, she smirked and said, "I've already given you the soundbite." It's funny to me. They know they're playing a game. We know they're playing a game. It's not like the playbook is a secret. But of course they play the game because there are no repercusions. They aren't willing to penalize others for their incompentency, because incompentency made by party members is just a "mistake," and as the Preside...