Artwork by Michael DiMilo Each year, in the family holiday tradition, my wife and I venture out to buy our Christmas tree. We’re lucky enough to live across the street from a big tree lot so we don’t have very far to go—we can walk right over. It’s very convenient. It’s also nice to be …
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Category:Social Commentary
Family Reunion
Artwork by Michael DiMilo After the Thanksgiving holiday, during our gastric recuperation period, my family and I sat down and watched Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Irishman, in its entirety. To say the film is epic is to abuse the term understatement; not only is the film’s running time three and one-half hours, but the storyline …
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Thoughtless
Artwork By Michael DiMilo In the 2006 movie, Idiocracy, the main character, a very average guy, volunteers to be a test subject for a top-secret hibernation program. After a mishap, he awakens five centuries in the future into a society that is so ignorant that the president of the United States is a retired professional wrestler …
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Hands I Cannot See
Artwork by Michael DiMilo This last Saturday, I installed myself at a table at the Authors Market at the Southeast Wisconsin Book Festival to hawk copies of my novel, The P.S. Wars: Last Stand at Custer High. A lot of people stopped and engaged me in some very interesting conversations. We talked about everything from self-publishing, …
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Devolution
Artwork by Michael DiMilo This past weekend, my brother and took a trip to the family cabin in order to take in the pier, an autumn ritual. It’s a long ride to get up there, just under a four-hour trek, but the fall colors were just reaching their peak, so it was very scenic, although …
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The Big Burnout
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter After Donald Trump was elected—and even before then (during the non-stop drama of his reality-TV campaign and election)—I was an avid consumer of political news. On cable TV, I followed Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher, Joe Scarborough with Mika Brzezinski, and even, for as long …
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The Big If…
Artwork By Michael DiMilo Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would be commencing an impeachment inquiry against President Trump based on whistleblower evidence alleging the president had pressured Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden. After speaking to the urgency of the situation and the …
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Immoral Support
Artwork by Michael DiMilo In a story that recently went viral, an ad agency employee was summoned to a meeting with his human resources supervisor, presumably to be terminated, and was told that he would be able to have a “support” person accompany him to the interview. The employee elected to bring a clown as …
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The Sounds of Silence
Art By Michael DiMilo A couple of weeks ago, during one of our late summer hot spells, my wife and I were sitting on our front porch sipping a fine chilled French rose. We live on a relatively busy city street, but even with the traffic and other ambient noise, we were still able to …
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Better than What?
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Earlier this month, in the course of one twenty-four period, thirty-three people were killed during two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. According to CBS News, as of August 5th, there have been over two hundred fifty-five deaths resulting mass shootings in this country since …
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Giant Steps
Giant Steps Toni Morrison, one of America’s great visionary authors, passed away last week. We lost not only a supremely talented writer, but also a woman of profound courage, incisive vision, and sublime sensibilities. As an African-American woman, her writing enveloped and embraced the marginalized in our society—her society. Novels like Sula, Beloved, The Bluest …
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Civil Obedience
CIVIL OBEDIENCE I heard a great story the other day at my barbershop, that time-honored venue for a good conversation and the occasional bawdy tale. Things have changed, of course, and the barbershop is now not always a stronghold for the masculine sensibility. And that can be a good thing. The story I heard concerns …
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