Memoirous

 Have you been seeing on PBS the advance trailers for the new Ken Burns film on Hemingway? I’m getting excited. Now, to be honest, I haven’t always been a Hemingway fan. In college I had a knee-jerk reaction to the macho, big-game hunter misogynist image. I say image, because I had a change of heart after reading A Moveable Feast—after which I turned to his earlier works, the novels etc. It is the style, not the man, I most admire. I’ve tried to adopt his use of the declarative sentence. In flash there is a need to pare down words into a paragraph essence. A squirt or a dab will hopefully evoke, jusgt enough to bring the reader into the equation. I still tend to overwrite, throw the whole thesaurus at an idea. Hemingway was a complicated man and I’m interested in what Burns and Novik have uncovered in their documentary. One of the trailers hinted at one of the obstacles I had with the man/writer: his focus on gender and how it might not be as boxed in as critics once thought....

Remember when you were a kid and you got junk mail. Real mail, through the slot or in the mailbox? Your mom got it and turned it over or not even that—and threw it out. Today that same mom is the prime target for “fake” internet news. PBS Newshour is doing a series titled Junk Mail. One, I like this title as opposed to fake news as that terminology has gotten corrupted. The anology of junk mail rings true with my generation (plus). We all can relate to those annoying adverts, credit cards we didn’t order, appeals for funds. We weren’t fooled. Not so today. A young IT guy has developed for PBS a Junk News Tracker . Cameron Hickey did not have to look far for a person to base his research upon: he turned to 86-year old grandmother. This lady is total click bait, a sucker for everything coming down the drain. A self-proclaimed conservative Christian from Ohio. “To understand the scale and shape of a problem that was incredibly opaque, we began intensive research...

Good old Seamus , always there when you need him. Faithful to the end, a great one for a laugh. A boon companion. Like any good dog—you can trot him out to do tricks for the company, entertain your friends. Of course you don’t want him underfoot—just ever-present when you need him, when you’re in the mood. The only real problem is what to do with him until you’re ready. Board and feed—of course you already do that for your fancy-pant horses (to the tune of $77,000 tax credit for Rafalca the dressage show beast). The pets are like family until time to go home—and then they have to ride on top of the car. But what is a little temporary inconvenience, a bit of discomfort—when one is so well loved and appreciated—most of the time? From the Daily Kos: The FortuneBlog on CNN Money gives us a peak of an interview they did with Mitt Romney that will be published soon, in Fortune, where in he finally reveals some of the specific cuts he will make in his plan to balance the budget. ...