Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Aug 10 2022
Torch Song Elegy
I’m on an “Internet retreat” at the moment, in case you’ve been wondering where the interminable essays have gone. But I want to post a quick word before returning to my fiction labors. Perhaps it will serve to explain why I’ve absented myself. You don’t need me to read the news to you. …
Aug 08 2022
We Have A Winner In The Ultimate Obscenity Contest
And it’s Walt Disney Corporation: Walt Disney has been cancelled by Walt Disney. Here’s the back story: When Disneyland first opened in 1955, Walt Disney delivered a speech welcoming people to the happiest place on Earth. To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here …
Aug 08 2022
A Spot of History
This comes from FEE, by way of our favorite Graybeard. It concerns the first important communications development of the 19th Century, the telegraph: In America, the first telegraph line was run by the federal government, from 1844 to 1846. As historian Burton Folsom explained, Cave Johnson, the Postmaster General, argued that the …
Aug 07 2022
It’s Fun To Swim At The…
YMCA? Perhaps not for Julie Jaman: Julie Jaman, an 80-year-old woman from Port Townsend, Washington, expressed her discomfort and fear when she encountered a male in the women’s shower area at the local YMCA. The YMCA’s reaction? Jaman was permanently banned from the facility, according to the Port Townsend Free Press. …
Aug 06 2022
The Most Awful Day, 108th Anniversary
If you haven’t read this Baseline Essay, today is the day for it. Most people’s historical memory is weak. Few know anything much about the War to End War. This, everyone should know. Make your day a better one than the one commemorated above.
Aug 06 2022
De Gustibus Dept.
This has been on the Web about 2317 billion times. Even so, I can’t help but laugh every time I see it: I suppose that makes me a little strange…or a Y-chromosome bearer. Whatever.
Aug 04 2022
Wanting And Not Getting
(No, this won’t be about sex.) It’s easy to talk fliply about “predilections” and “mindsets” and what they impel their holders to do. I’ve done it many times. Yet it often provides plausible explanations for the behavior common to certain categories of persons. While there are always exceptions and there always will be, …
Aug 03 2022
And Now For Something Completely The Same
(Apologies to the greats of Monty Python.) It is a terrible mistake ever to trust a government agency that has a medical or “public health” ambit. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies to such agencies with lethal force: Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be …
Aug 03 2022
Socialism: A Reminder
Canadian poet and commentator David Solway has the story: A few days ago my wife and I brought her mother, who was suffering from a serious leg infection, to the local ER. We were worried about the possibility of gangrene, which an acquaintance some years back had contracted under similar circumstances, resulting in …
Aug 02 2022
When Wrong Is Right
A conversation that occurred between great jazz pianist Thelonious Monk and an aspiring musician provides three-fourths of today’s title. The young man played a sequence of notes to Monk, and asked him “What would be the right continuation?” Monk replied, “Wrong is right.” Another jazz icon, guitarist John Abercrombie, provides a similar anecdote about …
Aug 01 2022
An Overlooked Lesson
I’ve written to this effect on several occasions: The New Segregationists Hard Truth Unspeakabilities Media Strategies And Tactics New Things To Fear Nevertheless, the idea isn’t sinking in very widely. I suppose that’s just the consequence of a small readership. All the same, it’s somewhat depressing. “But what’s the lesson?” I hear …
Aug 01 2022
The Terror Is Approaching
And it is intentional: Darren Brady, 51, has slammed Hampshire Police for ‘impeding his right to free speech’ after he was placed into handcuffs on Friday at his home in Aldershot for sharing a meme. Footage of the arrest was widely shared on social media and showed an officer who told Mr …
Jul 31 2022
Entertainers and Entertainment
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. For the moment I simply can’t fulminate about politics or current events. I’m out of bile. But that doesn’t mean I have nothing for you today. *** I’ve often found myself stalled in the middle of some novel-length project. In the most dramatic case, the “stall” lasted for twelve …
Jul 30 2022
The Pacification
My thoughts are more scattered than usual this morning, for a bevy of reasons my Gentle Readers would probably find uninteresting, excessively personal, or both. But when I sense that the floor of our national handbasket is being ripped away by flesh-eating zombies, such that the lake of bubbling lava below is plainly visible, …
Jul 30 2022
Accolades
No one commentator can cover everything. Some choose to specialize in one sort of news or development. Others relax and accept their discursive natures. But whatever one chooses to cover, learning to punch hard and strike a vital spot, without exhausting the reader’s patience, is essential. Sadly, it’s a skill I haven’t yet mastered. …
Jul 29 2022
Aspects Of Aging
One of the inevitabilities of life is life itself: if you don’t die, you’ll get older. Of course some persons do, ah, elude that development, though whether their course is the better one I must leave to individual judgement. I’m on one side, Deborah Harry’s on the other. Choose according to your tastes. …
Jul 28 2022
What Cannot Be Reported As Fact
…can sometimes be depicted to good effect in fiction: Then there was the matter of process. How the election was run. How it was administered. The frenzied push to ramp up absentee and mail-in ballots and ramp down verification, especially in battleground states. How many states changed election laws? Hint: a lot. How …
Jul 27 2022
Individuality And Sex
Is this or is this not a strange combination? *** Recently, Carl Trueman, a professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, released Strange New World, a study of contemporary notions of identity, with emphasis on the Sexual Revolution. The book is a condensation of his earlier book The Rise and …
Jul 27 2022
A Quick Thought
I’ve written many times about political dynamics and the swelling of blatant demagoguery in response to the incentives built into our system of government. Recent developments, especially the increasing degree of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans at destroying our rights and seizing our property, persuade me that the time has come to declare the …
Jul 26 2022
The Rulers
To learn who rules over you, simply look to those you are not allowed to criticize. [Multiply attributed, most often to Voltaire.] The above seems sound. Certainly many aristocracies treated the criticism of the rulers — lese majeste — as a serious offense. In some such lands it was treated more harshly than …
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