Playing Free and Lose with Fact and Opinion….Wee…………..

Transnational capital has been able to break free of nation-state constraints to accumulation beyond the previous epoch, and with it, to shift the correlation of class and social forces worldwide sharply in its favour – and to undercut the strength of popular and working class movements around the world, in the wake of the global […]

Pull the Curtain Back and Take a Good Look

“Of course the irremediable bitterness in Picasso’s soul, the power of the inner sanction he felt later in life to wound and humiliate others, had to come in part out of the paradox that the paintings that brought him the greatest sums were precisely the works which had cost him the most miserable days of […]

It’s Nothing But Chump Change

“Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy ( […]

The New Narrative is a Comedy

I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking. Tennessee Williams 1981 The Writers Desk Time comes up again and again in conversation. We reserve in this go-go era a respect for original, finely crafted narrative. As it stands we are at a humanitarian crossroads. Ancient myths are vaporizing before our […]

Children at the Brink

I was running with the wind again. Headed north with Lacey riding shotgun. We had dinner in Ashland Saturday night. Sunday stopped in Eugene for breakfast. I’d been the producer of the street performing program at the Eugene Celebration for a bunch of years. Downtown Eugene has gone from bad to worse in the last […]

Yes, I’m the Great Pretender

Who are you kidding? Delusion abounds in this the age of information. We are deluded and misdirected in this ever increasingly complex civilization we have been born into. I try to understand economics. I read about the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. I listen to commentary on the radio. One friend is angry at labor unions. […]

The Nevada Single-Leaf Pinion Pine Nut as Plot

The Nevada single-leaf pinion pine (pinus monophylla) produces a nut. If you’ve ever made pesto you will recall that most recipes call for the use of pine nuts. If you’ve ever gone to a grocery store to buy pine nuts you soon discover that they are expensive. Retail they sell for near thirty dollars a […]

Slow Down You Move to Fast, You’ve Got to Make the Morning Last

Running the mile in less than four minutes, we knew it could be done we just didn’t know what it might mean. Now the rate of change seems to sweep whatever it is we are doing now into the dust bins of our present. So we sit with one foot in the present while we […]

I Feel like a Natural Woman

Do you listen to your body? Do you overrule yourself and go against instinct? If you are in an odd situation how do you feel your way through things? Moving from performing to writing and then back again I am reminded of this physical guidance system built into our nervous system. I put a scene […]

A Day at the Beach

Madness it seems is not always confined to a mere individual. The whole lot of us can be convinced to run right off a cliff. We seem to be capable of collective irrationality. If I didn’t have an understanding of yoga, the game of paintball, or solitaire I might look with virgin like eyes and […]