Fathers and Sons
Edward Curtin
“In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.” Friedrich Nietzsche Early June. Dawn brings mist covered mountains and an empty road. The car’s capsule draws us together....
Memorial Day: It’s Not About the Dead Soldiers but About Glorifying War
Edward Curtin
Although Memorial Day in the United Sates is ostensibly a day for honoring soldiers killed in wars, it is, rather, a day for promoting war. If it were to...
Let Me Now Praise James Agee
Edward Curtin
On the Romantic poet John Keats’ tombstone in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome are these words, which he chose: “HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER.” His...
Gatsby Meets Nietzsche on the Train to Town
Edward Curtin
“Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. What might have been and what has been Point to...
At the Lost & Found
Edward Curtin
My dear mother, who had an artistic temperament that tended at times toward the sentimental, liked to call me a contrarian. She was right. I think she liked but...
Do You Think You’ll Ever Know, Now That You Have Handed Your Mind to the Machine?
Edward Curtin
We live in a 24/7 media society of the spectacle where brainwashing is cunning and relentless, and the consuming public is consumed with thoughts and perceptions filtered through electronic...
A Tuneful Irish Tale
Edward Curtin
“Accomplished fingers begin to play. Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.” WB Yeats, Lapus Lazuli The old man in the Irish cap sat...
Whose Dog Was Being Wagged During Showtime Between Trump and Zelensky?
Edward Curtin
Art requires the use of imagination, but so does political and social analysis. But imagination is just a first step; it proves nothing. Evidence is required. But imagination rules...
Modern Times and Ancient Truths
Edward Curtin
Eighty-nine years ago this month, the film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. Considered one of the greatest movies ever, it was a comedic but savage critique of industrial...
Are the Dead Nostalgic?
Edward Curtin
I was asking this question recently when the nightmare of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians greatly disturbed my reflections and took me in another writerly direction. Now I wish...
Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged An Apartheid State From River to Sea By Thomas Suárez
Edward Curtin
Much has been written in the alternative press over the past year about the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and its other war crimes in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc....
Martin Luther King, Vietnam, and Gaza
Edward Curtin
Before my mind was turned to the subject of my title, I started to write a piece called “Are the Dead Nostalgic?” It’s a touchy philosophical question that has...
A Voyage into a Complete Unknown Known
Edward Curtin
“Every time I ask what time it is, I get a different answer” Henny Youngman I don’t know about you, but I find some movies useful and even entertaining...
A Christmas Star Is Always Born
Edward Curtin
It is no different now. The yearning still gnaws. The night dark, utterly silent, Sky stretched endlessly back Into an infinity beyond reach. And the fears, the tears Are...
My Internal Exile
“Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy;...
Lucid Summations of Fundamental Issues
Edward Curtin
In his 1959 classic book, The Sociological Imagination, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote that ordinary people are often reduced to moral stasis and feel trapped and overwhelmed by...
A Bizarre Kind of Executive Action: The Suppression of Epochal Documentaries
Edward Curtin
“The old lie: Dulce et decorum est /Pro patria mori (It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country”) Wilfred Owen Yes, it seems fitting that...
Everybody Knows: Do They?
Edward Curtin
“Everybody knows the boat is leaking/Everybody knows the captain lied” Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” When the polls closed on Tuesday, November 5th, I was sound asleep, like a baby...
Patrick’s Endgame When Words Fall on Deaf Ears
Edward Curtin
“I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything anymore, teach me others. Or let me be silent.” Samuel Becket, Endgame Before he went to Rockaway Beach...
Soul Suicide in the Ballot Box as Palestinians Are Butchered
Edward Curtin
It’s been a long time but worth remembering, if you can, that when the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001,...
