‘A spectre is haunting Europe,’ Archie Brown (2010) begins his book about the Rise and Fall of Communism. He wasn’t talking about Trump. Back then he was just another draft-dodging rapist and racist, who refused to rent property to black people, liked glittery things and to be on television. Putin had left the KGB and had set himself up as a fixer or mafia-type businessman, who retained strong links to his past. The spectre haunting Europe was...

Rebbeca Donner (2021) All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler. I write eulogies. They’re short as our lives. We lived. We died. But here’s a funny thing (you might not know) about those things that happened, in-between. These by far are my most popular posts. Well, apart from that one about a new bathroom—with pictures—that almost went viral. I’d people I don’t even know...

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: An American Story To be a true American is to welcome atrocities at home and abroad as signs of progress. Dismissing the shameful leadership in European capitals, excluding Russia, and in Israel. Rumi, a thirteenth century Persian/Palestinian poet recognised in ‘Only Breath’ common humanity: There is a way between voice and presence where information flows In disciplined silence it opens With wondering talk it...

Reasons for girls’ choice this century https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2022#:~:text=At%20mid%2D2022%2C%20there%20were,of%20males%20since%20mid%2D2011 . Question Thirteen – Why do you think that there seem to be more single women in the world today than in the past? Donna: I think it’s due to the media telling everyone: you can be who you...

Question 12 – Consider the stories and roles you were exposed to when you were growing up, do you think they have been helpful, or not? Donna: I’m not sure either way. Alyss: Not. As I mentioned a few questions ago, the romantic novel is quite a thing that the headspace attaches itself to, setting up things in the imagination that aren’t real. Men don’t go after the woman they really want, in fact, I have spoken to a few who didn’t because the...

I remember Pat Black from years ago from a defunct online magazine. One of us wrote ‘Nanny Gudgeon’s Teeth,’ and it wasn’t him, even though there was gold in that story. Good to see him becoming an international, bestselling celebrity. I thought I’d pop in and give the Ferryman a visit. ‘To Pay the Ferryman,’ is a play on words. You probably recognise the allusion to Charon. He’s the ferryman who transports souls across the river Styx to the...

The moral of the story is: WRITE IT NOW!

https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/the-emotional-robot-and-other-poems-by-scharlie-meeuws

Indians used to be the bad guys in movies. Whooping and swooping on peaceable white folk that were trying to murder them and steal their land. Familiar tropes such as the dumb blonde President that is also an insurrectionist, draft dodging, tax dodging, rapist—grab them by the pussy and friend of Jeffrey Epstein and Putin, kinda guy—are easily overused. A sympathetic look at the Seneca–Cayuga people and their allotted homeland of the Nation...

Flora and Son (2023) written and directed by John Carney. I’m not a great man for musicals. I’ll stretch to The Commitments . But recently I watched Kneecap . Like Flora and So n set in contemporary Dublin. The film was great. The music was shite. Like Flora, like son. Bertolt Brecht’s frequently quoted Motto comes to mind. It offers an excuse to seem vaguely knowledgeable, while being the opposite. In the dark time Will there also be singing?...