By Wayne Allensworth We are strangers in our strange-and-getting-stranger land. Alienation? That’s not quite what I’m thinking of, though what we see seems alien to any sane mind. The country is, in fact, largely unrecognizable, though flashes of our past appear occasionally in our collective line of sight. Landmarks remain, but they are glimpses of an exhibit at a museum. Unlike Moses, we are...
By Wayne Allensworth Eva Cassidy may be the best singer many of you have never heard of, and she may become the best singer you have ever heard. She died too soon in 1996 at age 33 of melanoma. I was living in the DC area at the time, and Eva frequently performed in clubs around town, but I learned of her too late, after she had passed away. She had just begun to attract attention, and her...
By Wayne Allensworth I sometimes hear sane people comment that our “clown world” reality seems like a bad dream. True enough. Then they return to scrolling on their iphones and generally going about the empty business that constitutes so much of post-modern life. I’ve tried to put my finger on the surreal quality that permeates our daily lives, but it is as elusive as trying to catch a cloud. In...
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By Wayne Allensworth Yevgeny Prigozhin (english.nv.ua) In my recent article on the “coup” that wasn’t in Russia, I raised the question of what the popular reaction to Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s aborted “March for Justice” might be; i.e., would the crisis this past weekend undermine Putin’s poll numbers, for instance? And what would the incident do to Prigozhin’s poll ratings? Possibly, I wrote, the...
by Wayne Allensworth Christina’s World (Andrew Wyeth) Once upon a time in a world that seems like a galaxy far, far away, I wrote a creative writing piece inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s painting. I was 13 or so, and the paper was for an English class. The teacher liked it and read it aloud to her classes. I can’t remember what I wrote, but that painting made quite an impression on the young me...
By Wayne Allensworth Yevgeniy Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin (ideapod.com) Here’s a preliminary take on the events in Russia this past weekend: Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Putin crony from St. Petersburg who heads the Wagner Group mercenary organization, after claiming that regular Russian army units had opened fire on Wagner camps in the war zone, announced that he was organizing a column of Wagner...
By Wayne Allensworth (Pexels.com) A certain older gentleman of my acquaintance, let’s call him “Mr. K,” is noticeably, steadily declining. He had been hale, hardy, and robust, even after receiving his doctor’s grim diagnosis. Now he appears pale and drawn. The decline has been sudden and swift, but not unexpected. Mr. K, after all, is nearing 93. He suffers from bone cancer, and his once...
By Wayne Allensworth (Factfile.org) The man who was our greatest living writer, a man who wrestled with God along with the ghosts of Faulkner, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Conrad, has passed away at the age of 89. May he rest in peace after having struggled mightily as an artist with the big questions—meaning, purpose, God and Man, life and death, good and evil–he never let go of in his...
By Wayne Allensworth I’ve always known there were dogs that wouldn’t hunt, and that you should let sleeping dogs lie. I’ve walked in high cotton, bit off more than I could chew, kept tabs on something or someone, had to be careful what I’ve wished for more than once, and have been disturbed to find the fly in the buttermilk (or ointment). Your humble servant is always fixing to do...
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