Category History
Father Carl takes on the empire again
While I was doing my fun little play about Father Carl Kabat’s Good Friday 1994 action yesterday (Saturday August 8) at Tompkins Square Park, the real Carl Kabat was getting himself arrested. Jane Stoever, a member of Peaceworks Kansas City writing for the Nuclear Resister newsletter, relates the story: On August 9, at about 7 a.m., […]
Keeping up the fight when the fight is lost
One of the issues that hangs up discussions of near term human extinction (especially among those who understand that we might well be on the road for that) is the way the larger public might abandon any attempt to fix the climate if they know we’ve passed the point of no return. I’ve had conversations and […]
The clown play at Tompkins Square Park–August 8
Unless things change drastically, I will be performing my play A CLOWN, A HAMMER, A BOMB, AND GOD at Tompkins Square Park in NYC on August 8 at 1 PM. This is part of a War Resisters League commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A CLOWN, A […]
Near Term Human Extinction 101
I have had a number of wonderful/sad/bittersweet/ conversations with people over the past few months regarding the probability of near term human extinction as a result of climate disruption. One of the problems for people who haven’t followed the discussions from people who understand near term human extinction is that the threads don’t fit together easily. Dr. […]
War Wimps and Donald Trump
The world has now been bombarded with the ‘debate’ over presidential aspirant Donald Trump’s trashing of the Vietnam war record of John McCain. That fight (for me at least) was a sideshow. Should military men be celebrated for their suffering? I think their sacrifice should be acknowledged. OTOH, as is argued in some places, McCain’s […]
Hostage Capitalism, the ACA and RIP Medical Debt
(a CBS promo for a story about RIP Medical Debt) I don’t wish to join the conventional chorus of nay-sayers about ‘Obamacare’ (formally the ACA), but results are in after the Supreme Court upheld the law a few weeks ago, and it ain’t pretty. It appears that the insurance companies are jacking up insurance rates some […]
The Dead Zone–parsing out the past year
This is (per WordPress math) my 400th blog posting. I started my blog in 2012 when the memes of Occupy Wall Street were not getting traction in Main Stream media. I also was working on touring a number of my plays–I was writing about protest and revolution and income inequality. Lots of gigs, very little money. […]
Heat waves 2015–thousands dead already
the iconic photo from India, where a recent heat wave melted asphalt. From Hindustan Times. We’ve been treated (if that’s the right word) to a number of heat waves already this year. The northern hemisphere is currently home to record temperatures all over Europe. England had the hottest July day on record on the First […]
A play for peace this Saturday–FREE
This coming Saturday I will once again don whiteface and a clown nose and tell people the story of a clown, a hammer, a bomb, and God. It is about a pacifist priest named Carl Kabat who disarmed a Minuteman III missile on Good Friday 1994 (which was also April Fool’s Day) while wearing a […]
Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party
Originally posted on The Weekly Sift:
Tea Partiers say you don’t understand them because you don’t understand American history. That’s probably true, but not in the way they want you to think. Late in 2012, I came out of the Lincoln movie with two historical mysteries to solve: How did the two parties switch places…
The Brooklyn Culture Jam 