Lessening Political Addictions

My brain’s a self-flogged chunk of meat and my nerves tight because the Electoral College is an undemocratic and grievous institution that, to understand, requires daily tracking of polls in critical states.  Tabulating popular votes would be fair and easy, but the system insists it’s better to stew about who’ll get winner-grab-all electoral votes and…

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Sarah Palin’s Biography in 2064

In honor of Sarah Palin, who would have been one-hundred years old this year, Shotgun Books is releasing Palin: Maverick, Stateswoman, and Mom.  The first chapter follows: Not since the evening Richard Nixon resigned more than three decades earlier had Republicans so dreaded a night as October second, 2008.  Even Democrats reached with trepidation for…

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Ryan Mathews Demolishes the Bruins who Ignored Him

Two years ago this November I went to see a Bakersfield phenom who was rushing for about 300 yards and four touchdowns a game against good high school competition.  I took notes and wrote an article and sent it to UCLA coach Karl Dorrell and three of his assistants, stressing Ryan Mathews wanted to attend…

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Highlights from the 2008 Olympics

I see many noble commentators have downplayed if not altogether ignored Olympic sports in order to rebuke China for a range of civil rights concerns and thereby imply the nation today is as ill as in the era of Mao, who shred at least as much flesh as Hitler and Stalin.  China has in fact…

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Bob Costas Explains Olympic Coverage

BEIJING – Every night during the Olympic Games I’m frequently overcome by sensual gratification and the release of absolute power: this invariably occurs as I tell billions of inconsequential viewers that, in essence, their time matters not, and fragments of headline sports they’ve waited months to watch will be shown in two or three  hours,…

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Poe at the Gentleman’s Magazine – Part 11

Edgar Allan Poe, despite working for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, seemed not to understand the implication of my being William E. Burton: I paid ten dollars a week, more than sufficient compensation starting in June 1839, and expected him to be a dutiful and deferential editorial assistant.  I realized many readers considered Poe brilliant, particularly after…

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Jewish Film Festival in the Bay Area

Baghdad Twist Don’t ask my age.  It’s none of your business, I told my son, and doesn’t concern people who’ll watch your documentary.  No one’s going to see me in this film.  They’ll only hear my voice.  Better they look at black and white photos of me as a child in reasonably hospitable Iraq where…

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Roderick Usher Assails Edgar Allen Poe – Part 10

My family and I are profoundly distressed by Edgar Allen Poe’s recent short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”.  We, who so often said yes when this forlorn orphan begged to visit, now learn he considers our home “melancholy” and one which pervades his spirit “with a sense of insufferable gloom.”  Had Poe…

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Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe – Part 9

I hated gossip about Eddy living with his “child cousin.”  I wasn’t a child but a young lady only three months short of fourteen.  Eddy still made sure our marriage bond said I was twenty-one.  That afternoon in May 1836 a smiling minister married us in our boarding house.  My mother and our landlord and…

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Poe the Editor and Family Man – Part 8

When Aunt Maria’s mother died her pension was also buried and that night Edgar Allan Poe raged to dig it up.  Aunty and Virginia guided him into bed from which he two days later arose dazed but determined to be responsible.  Aunty had become his real mother and Virginia, though only age thirteen, was already…

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Five Youths Attack Old Man

On Father’s Day at a church in Chicago, Barack Obama preached that “of all the rocks upon which we build our lives…family is the most important.”  And we must “recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation…They are mentors and role models.  They are examples of success…But if we are honest…we’ll admit…

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Aunt Maria Clemm Nurtures Poe – Part 7

Eddie was a sweet boy who loved me and my young daughter Virginia.  He tried to help but except selling a young slave I’d inherited he couldn’t make any money for us despite writing hours a day.   Our best prospect was John Allan, and sometimes I wrote him Eddie deserved to do well and would…

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Elbow Revolt

Late last summer my left elbow all at once began aching when I dressed and undressed or opened and closed a door.  It groaned during light exercises, throbbed as I sat with bent arms poised over the computer keyboard, and wailed in the bleak hours of night.  You can no longer deny it’s a problem,…

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Henry Poe – Part 6

Not critically but with pride I suggest that for his third book, Poems, Edgar had copied some of my stanzas.  I also concede I might have borrowed some of his.  I couldn’t guarantee much in the spring of 1831.  Once, I had appeared an impressive big brother, donning the uniform of a merchant marine and…

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Poe the Scholar and Soldier – Part 5

In person I may have addressed my foster father John Allan as Pa but in my heart and with others I called him a tyrant who, despite his wealth, denied sufficient funds for dignified survival at the University of Virginia, sentencing me to dress inelegantly and use my own hands to tidy my room.  Fellow…

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Civil War in Mexico

At press conferences I proudly proclaimed the capture of safe houses and drug cartel hit men in Mexico City, and displayed their powerful weapons, bulletproof vests, and stacks of money.   Here’s what they’re doing, I told the Mexican people.  I want everyone to know that I, Edgar Millan Gomez, am the national police chief and…

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Poe the Athlete – Part 4

I’m head track coach at a major university and have trained some of the finest young athletes in the world.  I don’t recruit anyone lacking potential to place high and score points in important meets.  That I explained to members of a literary society when they presented physical data about Edgar Allan Poe.  He was…

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Foster Father of Poe – Part 3

Convinced of my correctness I sailed from Scotland to America at age sixteen and immediately began as a clerk in the Richmond tobacco company of my Uncle William Galt.  The old bachelor was the wealthiest man in Virginia but kept me tight to business and doted on his four adopted children and four more he…

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Keeping Hemingway Alive

Never had I craved anything so much as this strange and alluring task. Thousands of other doctors clamored for the opportunity but most lacked the necessary vigor. Only a man obsessed would be fit to lead this scientific revolution, and I was thus chosen to sacrifice all in the quest to keep Ernest Hemingway alive…

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Tabulating Tiger Woods

More than a decade of launching missiles from the tee, targeting the green with long irons, battering the pin with approach shots, chipping close from the rough, nailing putts long and short on greens flat and undulating around the globe, pumping his fist, intimidating opponents, and forging preposterous victories – by 15 strokes in a…

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