Category Archives: Life and Death

The World Upside Down

The Coronavirus phenomenon has left so many attired in wonder that they know not what to say (1) – including the undersigned who runs the positive risk of losing some or all of his 25 readers. Writing objectively about the reported death of thousands and the predicted demise of millions is impossible. For the very Read More

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Quo Vadis Vatican?

The nature of the subject requires an introduction. A detective story does not require a murder, nor the events of a thriller need be fictional. Most detective stories include a murder because the gravity of the deed instills a sense of vicarious fear, triggers the pleasure of the riddle, and makes plausible the concealment that Read More

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The Fraud of Freud

I first read Freud’s writings when, probably unconsciously, I believed that if everybody says the same thing, it must be true. Freud’s extraordinary theories and mystifying lingo had many admirers and promoters. Just as one example, Eugene Goodheart, professor at Brandeis University, says, “Freud’s sheer power of narration provides a kind of emotional truth that Read More

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Goodbye Fidel

“He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” Hamlet, act 1, sc. 2 For many across the world, the death of Fidel Castro strikes us with an obscure sensation, like that which would be felt from the sound of darkness. And though expected, there was Read More

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Death of an Unsung Hero

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” Hamlet, act 5, sc. 2 I discovered by chance that a true American hero died two years ago, in a tractor accident, on his farm in Ohio.

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Orlando’s Horror

Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak; for I must talk of murders… Titus Andronicus, act 5, sc. 1 I will not repeat comments and reflections on the Orlando massacre. Rather, I will follow an imaginary trail from the denouement to the origins of the horror – or I should say horrors, Read More

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Chicago Burning

“…a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘One.’ ” Hamlet, act V, sc. 1 During the recent Memorial Day week-end in Chicago, eight people were killed, and at least 57 more wounded. For somewhat  folkloristically funereal reasons, it is a tradition to count the murdered, the shot and the wounded  during this quintessential American Read More

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Methinks I am a prophet…

No prophet will I trust, if she prove false. (King Henry VI, part 1, act 1, sc. 2)   It’s not even a question of reading “the book of fate and seeing the revolutions of the times…” (1), or of having “a thousand eyes to be filled with prophetic tears”(2). The audacious eloquence of Bernie Read More

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