Drum Roll Please ! !

Hello, everyone out there in anti-TV land! Finally, with this blog, all have been gathered in, and now every citizen of Island Earth has a blog. Sorry I've held out for so long, but I promise to make amends. I still have a dream of setting up a full-blown web site, but current events are so compelling that I need someplace (besides daily e-mails to long-suffering friends) to vent. And "current events" will, in fact, be the emphasis of this blog, although I reserve the right to inject a few quips and aphorisms and cheap shots from time to time. Broader essays and outlandish theories will be reserved, by and large, for the eventual web site.

Let me provide a very brief thumbnail sketch. I am a retired government employee who spent many years in the belly of the beast, i.e. Washington DC, and who has now removed to Pittsburgh, which has the distinction of -- unlike DC -- being a real place with real people living in it, rather than a temporary hitching post for the up-and-coming and power-crazed. From this lofty vantage point, and informed by the occasional drunken ravings of the local citizens as they lounge around "sports bars", I will offer trenchant and highly-subtexted observations of the contemporary scene -- the sort of thing one might find in an obscure journal or samizdat flyer, printed on rough newsprint and thrust into one's hand by a hooded stranger on the last bus out of town on a dark night.

My theme will ofttimes be that of the dilemma of the individual, in all of his nobility and absurdity, darting about like a hunted rabbit in order to avoid being crushed under the wheel of collectivism. It will counter the temptation, so ubiquitous in our day, to stay below radar and eke out one's life in a minimalistic fashion without trying to be heard, if only by a few. In this "age of information" we find that much of what we think of as "information" is mere noise -- a distraction -- and totally beside the point. "The media are the opiate of the people." There are questions that ought to be asked, and questions that can no longer be begged. And above all, there is the crying need for simple logic -- the paramount tool of the philosopher -- to cut through so many of the "issues" that perplex and baffle the citizen of today. Questions, ideas, and proposals that would have been considered absurd and laughable a mere generation or two ago are now given serious consideration by the legions of "talking heads" in the various media. I hope, in my own small fashion, to provide a few ways out of this morass, and to point out some rare instances of clear thinking, wherever they may be found.

My own political/social/economic baseline -- in the interests of "full disclosure" -- is a sort of hybird (hopefullly not a hydra) of paleoconservatism, libertarianism, and Catholic social teaching. (And yes, there is a nexus there, as unlikely as it might seem offhand.) And, gosh, it's not like I spend all my time in a darkened room tapping on a keyboard. I also devote large portions of my time to pottery, music, dance, cooking, movies, philately, and enjoying the outdoors. No, I am not one of those bloodless creatures spawned by the Internet that only on occasion ventures out into the sun, only to be scorched and blinded, and scurries back into its hole. I am a venerable 63 years of age and, while not quite a "bon vivant", am hard-pressed to go for very long without my Four Basic Food Groups: orange juice, sushi, single-malt Scotch, and cigars. I am also blessed with six highly-accomplished children and three (at last count) fine granddaughters. I am also one of that strange, esoteric group known as "Latin Mass Catholics", having converted to Catholicism a number of years back, and then taken a circuitous route to my present spiritual home. (My "spiritual pilgrimage" will provide material for a future web site entry. Or at least that is the plan.) My attitude toward current events is that they are not so much "causes" as symptoms of various underlying pathologies -- in society and in the individuals that make it up. And yet I do not blame truly innocent victims -- only those who willfully remain ignorant, not to mention those who knowingly exploit and oppress people who are simply trying to scratch out a living as best they can. As Jimmy Durante once said, "Why can't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?” I couldn't agree more. And to that end.....