The Union Makes Us Strong, and Fox’s Corporate Backers Can’t Stand That

My friend and mentor Big Stu provides a succinct answer to the question, “Are unions still relevant?“ The story itself is classic Fox: feigned objectivity while implicitly slanting the story in favor of the corporate narrative. Yes, “the numbers don’t lie”. But the numbers have a history, one that Fox and other corporate outlets persistently [...]

Putzing around the Christmas tree

Anyone who has ever spent time in the vicinity of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in December will surely have been perplexed by signs pointing the way to the “Putz”. This old New York Times article explains: Only the chosen few can afford to have a really impressive ‘putz’ which fills half a room, and represents a landscape [...]

Don we now our tacky apparel

Of all the peculiar customs associated with Christmas, the wearing of hideous sweaters is surely the most bizarre–more disturbing even than carrying around a ribbon-festooned horse’s skull on the end of a stick. As if Christmas sweaters aren’t inherently awful enough, the horror is compounded for me, because of an association from my time in [...]

Hanukkah, with reservations

From my Jewish-Anarcho-Syndicalist perspective, I used to celebrate Hanukkah as a commemoration of popular resistance against imperialist oppression. But in reality, the Maccabees were roughly the Taliban of their day, and not exactly people I wish to honor as part of my Jewish heritage. When it comes to Jews heroically taking up arms in collective self-defense, [...]

A Zissn Danksgebn

The Fly Fishing Rabbi and The Forward offer some Jewish perspective on Thanksgiving. I was thinking about this myself, after hearing an NPR story this morning about a Greek-American family whose Thanksgiving dinner consisted mostly of traditional Greek foods. I don’t recall any distinctively Jewish foods at my family’s Thanksgiving table when I was growing [...]

Classical Glass!

If anyone wanted to get me a really special present (Hanukkah is just around the corner), they wouldn’t go wrong with one of these. The 7-foot 3-weight model would be perfect for Blue Ridge & Smoky Mountain trout streams.        

May Day greetings!

So this is the new year, and I have no resolutions

Eartha Kitt

How sad, but somehow apt, that Eartha Kitt, whose many gifts to the world included one of the few Christmas songs I truly love, should die on Christmas.

Ocho kandelas para mi