ArcaMax

The radio station where I work part time has 12 parking spaces in the lot, though there are seldom more than seven cars parked between the yellow lines. There is a cemetery at one edge of the lot, a cemetery from the 1700s because this is Massachusetts. Inside the cemetery, broken gravestones are piled up on the ground. Others are worn down like...Read more

Poor Aunt Jemima. Gone from the syrup container, she is mourned by everyone who mourns Amos 'n' Andy, Stepin Fetchit, Birmingham Brown and every other comforting image of Black people as kitchen help, slightly larcenous goofballs or paragons of laziness.

That was back when Black people were comfortably nonthreatening, back when they "didn't ...Read more

All right. Don't touch me. I don't want to get sick. The virus, ya know.

You? You got more guts than me. You're a patriot. A Proud Boy. If they still had White Citizens' Councils, you'd join one. You're a fine person.

And because you're a proud fine patriot boy, you're off to a possible big rally in Oklahoma, a rally for Pres. Donald Trump, ...Read more

"I have black friends." "I don't see color." "All lives matter." "I never owned a slave."

Yup. Yup. Yup.

You're a leader in the civil rights movement. Accept the thanks of a grateful nation.

"Shoot a few of 'em. They'll stop rioting." "Send in the Army."

Yup. Yup. Yup.

You love the troops, the flag, law and order, and death. Accept this ...Read more

As punchline Pres. Donald J. Trump continues his honkin' big tour of many Jesuses, waving the Bible at an Episcopal church, visiting a shrine run by idol-worshiping Catholics, and no doubt on his way to wave a Quran at a mosque, I begin to see the light.

That's why I bought a copy of the Chiltons repair manual for the 2016 Buick Enclave. I ...Read more

I remember the days when the folk singers said a hard rain was a-gonna fall, and a hard wind was a-gonna blow, and a hard snow was a-gonna snow, and a hard hail was a-gonna ping off'n yer windshield.

It was fun listening to the folk singers tone-deaf imitation of the people among who I was raised.

Punchline Pres. Donald Trump, whose speech ...Read more

The French philosopher Pascal said that human beings are so easy to comfort because we are so easy to afflict.

Big deal. So, I went to college.

Still, the columnist who begins a column with a quote or paraphrases from someone you've never heard of establishes himself as intellectually superior from the git go, just as he can lay claim to being...Read more

Now that two women reporters I could throw over a fence have chased Pres. Donald Trump out of a press conference, I guess we understand why older white American men need so many guns. You never know when your intellect is going to get mugged by some small Asian-looking woman who wears a size 4 dress.

"Ask China," Trump said. What, does he think...Read more

The first God-given right I remember losing to big government was the right to sleep whenever I felt tired.

Yeah, kindergarten sucked. Of course, I didn't go to a public grade school. I went to a Catholic grade school, but I assume it was licensed by some arm of the government.

Before kindergarten, when I was a very little boy, if I felt tired...Read more

These days, I believe I match the description of the bad father in the old Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue."

I'm 62, and I'm, "big, and bent, and gray, and old," as the old man is described in the song.

I'm still Hell in a fight, though.

Laughably described as an "essential employee" by some government somewhere, I do three hours of talk ...Read more

As the government of an extremely small nation/house, our first mistake was ignoring the experts.

For days, our two cats, Maggie and Jack, had spent their evenings in the kitchen, staring fixedly at a cabinet.

"Maybe we have a mouse," my wife, Deborah, said.

We looked. No mouse droppings. Nothing had been nibbled.

"No mouse," I said.

In ...Read more

As a working-class man who shrewdly avoided work by becoming a writer, the United States Post Office means three things to me.

The first is that postal jobs are good jobs. Union. Seniority. Security. Benefits. Pension. Veterans' preference. All working-class people know those things.

The second is that the mail comes every day, no matter how ...Read more

It's been a little hard to get groceries lately, what with the coronavirus hoax still abroad in the land of the free. Still, no matter how many the hoax kills, I have to go to work, and I have to go to the grocery store.

After retiring from the newspaper business, I took a job doing talk radio. Imagine my surprise when I was declared an "...Read more