Keeper of the Clown Bell

Hero Earlier this summer I took my son to watch the film "Apollo 11" and though I've seen several documentaries and feature films about lunar exploration including  Al Reinert's 20th anniversary masterpiece "For All Mankind" and  Stanley Kubrick's prophetic "2001: A Space Odyssey" there was a sequence in this new expose that was so moving and powerful I simply must call it out. There are a set of shots capturing the faces of the 3 astronauts going through the preparations and suiting-up just prior to boarding the rocket that will launch them into outer space and, eventually, the Moon. These stoic images take place fairly early in the film with a Walter Cronkite voice over interspersed with short (and rapid) montages of family photos and home movies encapsulating each man's private life. The overall effect was, for me, incredibly moving and I can feel tears welling in my eyes even now just recalling it because the faces of these rela

"The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him." Chief's of Staff and their puppets The lads from Leeds that made up Gang of Four and released the 1979 LP titled "entertainment!" (note the exclamation point) were crypto commie art students and hipsters (before there were hipsters) in the pre-Thatcher British mode. As this blog has pointed out on previous occasions it is often "men of the Left" who blurt out the truth and strike a chord even when their intention is diametrically opposed to truth telling. It all comes down to a sly bit of Agitprop plastered on the cover of the album with shots of an Indian (the Native American kind) and a Cowboy shaking hands and the words - "The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him ." Very clever but the key to the riddle

Since I'm the guy responsible for keeping the parking lot and patio weed free, managing the flower beds and, in the late spring or early summer, planting acers of corn and pumpkins I'm a big time proponent of herbicides based on glyphosate like "Roundup". Since I use many, many gallons of the stuff I tend to buy the concentrate 5 gallon containers from Southern States and mix my own brew, but custom mixed or just off the shelf it all works the same -  the glyphosate neutralizes a specific enzyme that plants (any and all plants) use to create the proteins necessary for growth. It's a beautiful and miraculous thing to "watch" it work because the end comes slowly, imperceptibly over time from the moment the weeds are sprayed they start dying and by day 10 they're dead and gone. If you look at the grass sprouting up through your driveway on day 2 or 3 you'd think, "geez, that stuff isn't working at all" but then a week later you whe

Disposable In our time of conflict and confusion as we ride out the earthquake of the cultural revolution and the tsunami of the digital revolution and the meteor strike of the Trump Presidency it is a popular pastime to attempt to pinpoint the root cause or start date for all the pain and disappointment. Was it the Kennedy assassination (the first one - JFK) when America "lost its innocence" or the 1967 Summer of Love with its degenerate hippy ethos or was it Nixon's impeachment and the silent coup which installed Jimmy Peanut or the Reagan Restoration? Do our troubles have even deeper roots? The McCarthy Witch Hunts of the 1950's when Russian operatives had infiltrated key parts of the US Government (hey, wait a second...) or maybe the establishment of the Administrative State, the Intelligence Community and the Military/Industrial Complex under FDR's New Deal. Perhaps it was the American Civil War (War Between the States) and the forced union and reconstru