The Arts

To Build a Fire by Jack London

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Editor’s Note: To Build a Fire is a short story by American author Jack London. John Griffith Chaney was his real name. He was born on Jan. 12, 1876 and died on Nov. 22, 1916 at the age of 40 on the sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch in Glen Ellen, California. London…

The Secret But True Story of Network News and The Happy Pill

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Satire – Fiction – Film Proposal -  By Glynn Wilson -  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Here’s a movie script idea for Netflix or one of the other streaming companies. FADE UP FROM BLACK – A secret cabal of corporate executives are huddled in a conference room in a New York skyscraper. They are watching video clips…

Operation Zap: A Novel and Film by Aaron Murphy

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Editor’s Note: In 1992, while working as a staff writer and reporter for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast, I stumbled onto a dangerous story involving electromagnetic fields and pulses being developed by Naval Intelligence in Pensacola, Florida. The stories I wrote about it were so controversial that a rogue agent working for…

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost – Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim,…

A Visit from St. Nicholas

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By Clement Clark Moore – ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums…

National Gallery of Art Reopens in Nation’s Capital

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By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Where else in America can you see in person a painting by Leonardo da Vinci? No where. Ginevra de’ Benci is a portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci of the 15th-century Florentine aristocrat Ginevra de’ Benci. The oil-on-wood portrait was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in…

Memorial Day Tribute: Eschol Wilson

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By Glynn Wilson – As Memorial Day Tribute, I am memorializing this here on the web to be archived in a more prominent and permanent place than Facebook. This is a picture of my dad, Eschol Wilson, who served as a corporal in the U.S. Army near the end of World War II. He was…

Penny Dreadful Showtime Series Ends With the Words of Wordsworth

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Spoiler Alert By Glynn Wilson – What would we do without television entertainment and literature in the age of COVID? While I’m not a huge fan of Hollywood monster movies, it was hard to resist John Logan’s Penny Dreadful, a Showtime series now on Netflix depicting the dark side of Victorian England in the 19th…

Prometheus the Poem By Lord Byron

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By Lord Byron (a.k.a. George Gordon) Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity’s recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they…

Will The Arts and Music Survive the Coronavirus?

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Editor’s Note: Can you even imagine a world without the arts? No writing, no music, no movies, only factory work and no play? “Without the arts life would not be worth living.” You can quote me on that. Perhaps the saddest thing in the world today, now that we are all dealing with the novel…

Robert Frost: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.…

Thinking About An Honest Life by the Singing River in Muscle Shoals

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By Glynn Wilson – MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. — Sitting beside the Tennessee River in McFarland Park by the Florence Visitor’s Center after spending a few days in the quad city area often just called “the shoals,” I cannot help but think about what might have been. What if I had stuck with the music business…

Photo Essay: A White House Tour

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By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – For the past three years I have chased a dream to visit the White House and stand on the same hallowed ground where so much American history has taken place in the nation’s capital. Finally, thanks to the helpful staff of Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Congressman from…

New York Times Hires Extreme Climate Science Denier

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By Joe Romm – Amidst backlash and subscription cancellations for hiring extreme climate science denier, colunnist Bret Stephens, the New York Times offered a stunning defense: There are “millions of people who agree with him.” With that ‘logic’, the Times could hire as a columnist former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke — or…

Photographer Rowland Scherman Was There

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He Shot Rock ‘n’ Roll Too EDITOR’S NOTE: We caught up with Scherman and got this story we ran on August 6, 2011 in The Locust Fork News-Journal. We re-run it here today because we are about to hook with Rowland again in New York on a trip to meet up with author and new…

Mardi Gras in Mobile Has Become a Circus

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By Catherine Bullock Rainey – Arts Editor – With the glamor of a Broadway show and the ambience of a carnival, Venardos Circus brings a whole new light to entertainment and the festivities of Mardi Gras. “We are proof that the circus is not coming to an end!” announced ringmaster and producer Kevin Venardos during…