Occupation of Independence

Driving across Hell's Canyon the other day, I saw a little bit of heaven:  It was easy for me to appreciate these red maple leaves, but I can't lavish enough thick, gloppy words over the experience to cause a reader to appreciate the leaves.  Most of them see real trees-- you know, the kind with leaves of interesting shapes -- all over their hometown and yard.  'Hunger is the best sauce' as the old saying goes, and you must live in a gawdforsaken waterless wasteland to feel that hunger. Another miracle: enough rain was prophesied that I actually relocated camp onto a hard surface.  It was exciting to visualize the possibilities with the clouds around camp: There were many flowers and much green grass between the sagebrush: One of the real bragging points of a camera is that it can take closeups of small, dispersed flowers and give them importance while blurring the background. All this vegetation makes for some happy mule deer: I hope the reader is as big a sucker fo...

 Whether the written word is obsolete or not might seem like an over-the-top question.  But before deciding too quickly, let me ask you when was the last time you did a long division problem with pen and paper?  Or even addition or multiplication? I do multiplication mentally when calculating the prepay price of gasoline.  But I do the multiplication in a weird sort of spatial/geometric way, not much like how we did multiplication in grade school. Or play this game: imagine a 75 year old comparing today with the year of their birth, 1950.  I find it even more interesting to go back 75 years from their year of birth, 1950.  What sort of predictions would somebody have made in 1875 about what 1950 would look like? Another way to ask the question is: why was writing invented in the first place? 1.  Semi-permanent records of kings and gods, inscribed into stone or clay tablets.  Even papyrus lasted a lot longer than a human lifetime.  The same w...

  In principle the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II is an excellent opportunity to revisit the misinformation and myths that many Americans subscribe to.   Larry Johnson has done a good job of that at sonar21.com .  I hope many more writers take on the myth. After 80 years it would be so nice if America finally said, "Why are we still in NATO?  Let the Europeans run NATO." But of course powerful lobbies want to keep the gravy flowing.  So the post-World War II American empire will linger on.  Still, I want to cling to a little bit of hope that the 80th anniversary will have some effect on how Americans think. Doing an internet search of iconic World War II photos seemed like a good idea.  Here is the photo that captures the myth better than any other: It  is natural for a Baby Boomer like me to relate to this photo.  It reminds us how coterminous we were with the American Empire.

When was the last time you read a clay tablet?  How about a papyrus scroll?  It is getting to be that way with paper-and-ink books.  eBooks represent genuine progress.  But something more fundamental is at stake. Regardless of the physical medium of a book, the real problem is that a book is a gigantic pile of information that is mostly useless and therefore tedious to shovel through.   Books are one-directional.  They are not conversational and lively. Maybe Twitter (X) has the right idea: the written word still has value, but say what you want to say in a paragraph or two, and then shut up.  Let somebody else respond.    I am being too hard to please, because on You Tube I start thinking of new complaints: why so many talking heads?  Who needs video?  A radio or podcast would work just as well.  And why so many non-rhotic English accents? It is ironic to be writing about this because yesterday I had the best conversation...