The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — The rain has stopped and the sun is coming out from behind the clouds as we set up in the nation’s capital for the first time since November, when it was a celebration by the campfire as Joe Biden was declared the winner in…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It would be hard to imagine making it through the hellscape year of 2020 and the COVID winter and spring of 2021 without the internet — or the art of movies. As frustrating as new computer technology can be sometimes, how could we have possibly made it…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Back in late January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Click for human survival on planet Earth at 100 seconds until midnight, mainly due to the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration in the United States. At that time, they were…
Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – Now that Trump is gone, the CIA can tell the truth. Well, sort of anyway. They could have just quoted the Book of Revelations and been done with it. It’s an old, familiar story. The first trumpet sounds: Hail, fire, and blood rain down on earth, burning up…
Guest Column – By James Rhodes – I am motivated by the most recent comments by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explaining why he, nor his party, could support the national Biden infrastructure proposal: “…because the most unworthy would receive the vast majority of benefits…” As it turns out, the “most unworthy” are basically defined…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Remove the profit motive and the need for a happy ending. What stories are left? In this time of epic hardship, is it more important to talk about the world as it is, show it in all its gore and reality in a mirror,…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – All of a sudden I’m feeling an unquenched desire to start practicing Yoga. Why? Maybe because I just heard that the conservative, Christian Republicans in the Alabama legislature are dead set on keeping it banned from public schools. If they don’t like it, it must be good.…
“It’s very difficult, in geography as in morality, to understand the world without leaving your own house.” – Voltaire Sunday Reader – A Think Piece – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Do you ever just take some time off to simply think? To dream? Experts in psychology say this is critical not only to…
Guest Column – By Robert Reich – Income and wealth are now more concentrated at the top than at any time over the last 80 years, and our unjust tax system is a big reason why. The tax code is rigged for the rich, enabling a handful of wealthy individuals to exert undue influence over…
The Big Picture -Â By Glynn Wilson -Â As the capitalist Easter Bunny works overtime to deliver massive amounts of sugary chocolate to stores across America in time for the weekend to celebrate the fertility of spring and the alleged death and resurrection of a prophet named Jesus, pollsters and pundits are wringing their hands…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Cue up the spinning wheel of bad news. Simply turn on the TV or crank up the internet. Just as we thought the hellscape of 2020 was behind us, a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado replaces a mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, which supplants a border crisis…
An Update on the Legal Jeopardy of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump – Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – Now that the nation is finally beginning to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic and on this first day of spring begin to reemerge from the economic downturn caused by it, there is a…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Spring forward and sleep late. I know I did. The iPhone clock said 10:30. The devil who shall not be named is no longer tweet storming an insurrection against American democracy from the White House. A new sheriff is in town. People are already…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It was 56 years ago today (Sunday) that John Lewis led civil rights marchers north across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to face Alabama State Troopers and Dallas County sheriffs deputies on the other side with billy clubs, cattle prods and tear gas. By putting their…
Guest Column – By House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer – Originally written for Roll Call – In 2018, House Democrats won the majority on a promise that we would refocus the chamber on delivering “For the People.” The centerpiece of that effort was HR 1, the For the People Act, comprehensive legislation to root…
Editor’s Note: This news comes with no personal regrets, since I didn’t know either of the deceased. But I knew Jack Neely some when writing for Metro Pulse myself, one of the most interesting alternative weeklies in the country in print and online in the late 20th century. It’s a sad day when anyone dies,…
Sunday Reader – By Glynn Wilson – KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The east-facing window in this humble abode was enshrouded in fog the first thing Sunday morning, not the famous smoke you sometimes see in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Since it’s National Public Sleeping Day and the weather was not conducive to…
The Big Picture -Â By Glynn Wilson -Â GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Tenn. — Are you suffering from cabin fever from the COVID winter? Take a drive in nature in a park near you. When the forecast showed sunny weather and a high of 54 for Sunday, Feb. 21, I just had to get…
Hold Fast Reader Dear How to hold you reader dear: Regale you with comforting stories of barefoot summer mud puddles past? Excite you with salacious tales of sex scandals and conspiracies holding you aghast? Bore you with straight prose and fifth grade level blurbs of fair and balanced contrast? Or write the flame out of…
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining…
