A few years ago, I decided to grow potatoes on my property. We own a small fraction of an acre down-state, most of which is occupied by a century-plus old house. I try to use every available section of the land to grow things. Most years, I grow snow peas, tomatoes, hot peppers, basil, cilantro, …
The customer service windows at the post office in my town are staffed by three women. One of the women is older and quiet. The second is middle-aged, bitter and ontologically resentful. The third is younger and quite pleasant. The women do not share one eye between the three of them – but it would …
I have not flogged the techno-music group One Eyed Bastard Frog for some time. That is not for lack of belief or enthusiasm; it is merely because I thought that the message had gotten through and I did not want to bore readers. My SEO consultant tells me that I am wrong. You don’t let …
Fans of the Captain Underpants books will remember that each installment ends with one of the boys saying, “Here we go again”. In the books, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, who live in a small town in Ohio, have to deal with the antics of the principal of their school, who turns into a super-hero …
Rock King, the owner of Sister Kate’s in Stowe, wrote and performed a song in which he said where he would send each of his body parts when he died. His head would go one place, his liver somewhere else. He did not say what he would do with his privates. His ass would go …
This morning, as on all mornings, I turned on my phone shortly after my senses were assaulted by the rude stream of consciousness. As on all mornings, the first app I opened was email, and as on all mornings, I reached to delete a string of spam. But why was this morning different from all …
Putin is using thermobaric weapons in Ukraine. A thermobaric bomb, or a “vacuum bomb” is a two-stage weapon. In the first stage, a cloud of aerosols made up of droplets of flammable material is disbursed. In the second stage, the cloud is ignited. Since the aerosols can move around and, in certain cases, into buildings, …
Pity Ota Šik. Šik was a Czech economist who worked in the Novotny and then the Dubček governments during the 1960s. He advocated for a “third way”, or socialism with relaxed price controls and elements of private enterprise. The hard-liner Novotny stymied his efforts. Dubček supported them, and they became an important element of the …
A few weeks ago, I got beers with a professor of infectious diseases at a hoity-toity medical school in the City whose kids used to go to school with mine. He spoke about the pandemic; I spoke about shaking down rednecks. We both spoke about our pain-in-the-ass kids. After some pleasantries, I asked, “Hey”- “Hey, …
When people in the Homeric poems really screwed up, they would sacrifice hecatombs. For example, when Odysseus travelled to the underworld, he met the shade of Tiresias. Tiresias told him that Odysseus had gotten on Poseidon’s bad side by blinding his son, the Cyclops. If he wanted to make that right, he should put an …