Carlo | November 7, 2010
Musings of a peripatetic thinker. Ponderings without a point. Catching up. Intellectual laziness. Call it what you will, I figure I should capture some mind wanderings, given the week past, last night’s entertaining Cleveland Jazz Orchestra concert “The Cleveland Scene,” and upcoming travels. I’ve never been great at headlines. I’m depressed about the elections, though [...]
Carlo | October 23, 2010
Nearly two years into the presidency of Barack Obama, the country seems ready to backpedal. It looks Dubya Lite John Kasich will be governor of Ohio despite decreasing unemployment and glimmers of creativity. Rand Paul might be governor of Kentucky, Sharron Angle the senator from Nevada. The mind reels. The country—hell, the world—is rocky. England [...]
Carlo | May 25, 2010
I miss my parents lately, particularly now that I’ve read The Orientalist, Tom Reiss’ biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a tortured intellectual and prolific writer who lived while the great empires—the Ottoman, the Hapsburg, the Russian—died and totalitarianism took over. Nussimbaum was also known as Essad Bey and Kurban Said; he was a Jewish Orientalist whose [...]
Carlo | May 7, 2010
I’m staying in the Dolce Sitges north of Barcelona and Barcelona just outscored Milan, Italy in soccer. I’m in a bar in a beautiful hotel in a sunny suburb of a gorgeous city that nevertheless just lost its grip on a contest that rivets this continent like football does in the United States. Good to [...]
Carlo | March 6, 2010
The headline is a pun I use as an excuse to catch up with my blog, woefully unattended to for nearly a month. Seriously, it’s a pleasure to write this at my living room window as I watch snow mounds on the deck finally melt. It’s still cold but it’s bright, the snow crunching less [...]
Carlo | December 24, 2009
I went downtown Dec. 22 to pick up new glasses at Jerold Optical on Huron Road. I parked at a meter with 25 minutes left. My daughter Lylah and I picked up the specs within 10 minutes and left Jerold, the only full-service optical emporium left downtown. We saw a cop ticketing my car. I [...]
Carlo | December 17, 2009
It’s almost Christmas, time for the spirit of giving, but our politicians seem to have lost sight of this. Three weeks ago, I ranted against the Republicans for saying no to health care reform. Now, I’m blasting spineless or mean-spirited Democrats, particularly Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a self-styled conservative determined to scuttle health care reform [...]
Carlo | November 24, 2009
Are Americans getting stupider? Or is it just Republicans? Seems like in the face of contrary evidence, Americans, according to a Washington Post poll, are beginning to think global warming doesn’t exist. The Christian Science Monitor, meanwhile, just published evidence to the contrary. Might global warming become an issue as divisive as abortion? God forbid. [...]
Carlo | September 17, 2009
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cried about the body politic today, it reminded me of the day in January 2008 when then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton grew misty during a New Hampshire campaign stop. Clinton intimated tears when a woman asked her how she bore up under the campaign strain. Pelosi quivered when she compared today’s [...]
Carlo | August 18, 2009
I just read Politico’s story on liberal pundit dismay with Obama. I’m alarmed myself. Obama’s waffling on health care reform, apparently ready to sacrifice a public option to insurance and pharmacy interests (forget single payer). He hasn’t lifted the Cuban embargo despite calls for air travel from here to there, not just from there to [...]
