Cool Beans

Kudos for Michael DiMilo Congratulations to Michael DiMilo for his award-winning short animated film Cool Beans. We are incredibly lucky to have Michael provide many of the outstanding illustrations for this blog and now you can see his outstanding animated work, too. If you haven’t yet seen it, check out coming attractions for this delightful …
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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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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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The Blurry Line

Artwork by Michael DiMilo             This last week, my family and I took a mini-vacation to the family cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. The cottage has been in our family for a little over fifty years and sits on a beautiful spring-fed lake. After my father passed away, my mom—as she’s fond of telling—used to …
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The Part You Won’t Recognize

Artwork by Michael DiMilo The controversy over the freshmen Congressional members of the “Squad”, ginned up by President Trump in inflammatory tweets last week, reminds me of how prominent black athletes who spoke out for black rights in the ‘60s and ‘70s were condemned by mainstream American culture. Muhammad Ali is the archetype for this …
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Deja Vu

Artwork by Michael DiMilo             Since 2002, including sequels, remakes, and reboots, there have been a total of seven Spiderman movies featuring three different actors in the titular role: Toby McGuire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. Since 1989, there have also been a total of seven Batman movies featuring Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian …
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Brooding Parasite

Artwork by Michael DiMilo The brown-headed cowbird has a notorious reputation as a brood parasite, a bird that relies on other species to raise its own young. A cowbird will find a host nest, destroy or evict one of the original resident’s eggs, and replace it with one of her own. The host bird will …
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Ticktock, Ticktock

Artwork by Michael DiMilo             In the 2016 movie Arrival, linguist Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, is called upon by the military to help communicate with enigmatic alien visitors who have mysteriously arrived on Earth. During the translation process, Banks slowly pieces together meaning from a language that is almost entirely alien to any type of …
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