by Richard Subber | Nov 30, 2020 | American history, Democracy, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality
“ . . . the Money Power of the country…”
Are these words scary, and familiar?
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me
and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . .
corporations have been enthroned,
an era of corruption in High Places will follow,
and the Money Power of the country
will endeavor to prolong its reign
by working upon the prejudices of the People,
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands,
and the Republic destroyed.”
Wait a minute! The thing is, this terrible forecast is 158 years old, and, sadly, no less prophetic now than it was during the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln wrote these words to friend on November 21, 1864.
The industrial revolution was booming then in America, and the economic and corporate foundations were being laid for the predations of the so-called Robber Barons and the captains of industry like Andrew Carnegie and the Gilded Age’s wolves of Wall Street like J. P. Morgan.
You can guess that Old Abe must have been looking into a dark space when he had that vision.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
from the agile mind
of Arthur Conan Doyle
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 4, 2020 | Democracy, Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Politics, Power and inequality
Too many gulfs…
Hand me that hammer
This lightening sky pulls my eye
upward from newly darkening earth.
Our troubled plain
has no points of light just now.
We face fears, terrors, hates, imprecations,
repudiations, exclusions…
Too many gulfs appearing,
too few bridges imagined
in the grim thoughts of too many.
I will build one bridge today,
I welcome this lightening sky
to ease my work.
November 9, 2016
I work on building a bridge every day. I try to do a good thing every day. That’s good for me and for America. It helps to keep me sane.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
by Richard Subber | Sep 22, 2020 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics
…the last battle never comes…
Book review:
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway
New York: Random House, 1992
412 pages
Like Moore and Galloway, I salute the brave American and North Vietnamese soldiers who fought and died in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 in the first major combat action of the War in Vietnam.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young is a bloody testament to the grinding horror of war. It’s too much to read all at once. It has too much death.
A North Vietnamese commander who was on the ground in the valley recalled, many years after the war, that his guiding principle had been “win the first battle.”
You and I know that he forgot to mention that no one knows how to win the last battle and end all of it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
A Farewell to Arms (book review)
classic Ernest Hemingway
with relentlessly realistic dialogue…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Feb 3, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, Politics
human beings may not survive…
Book review:
Losing Earth: A Recent History
by Nathaniel Rich
New York: MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019
206 pages
If you’re thinking that it’s just too much trouble to worry about global climate change and the prospect of a final end to human civilization, do read Losing Earth.
Rich lays it all out, in dispassionate history and an impassioned call for individual and collective action.
The stupefying truth is that nearly everything we know now about global climate change has been known by some sensible and honorable—and some greedy and dishonorable—men and women for the last 50 years.
Here’s the grisly truth: Losing Earth does not suggest any easy fix. There is no easy fix for the apocalyptic acceleration of global climate change, and the massive destruction of our living environment—our planet—that is already happening.
All of us need to try to empower leaders who will take the long view and do the right thing.
We need to “develop a strategy for expanding the limits of what is politically feasible.” The United States and our congress and our president must take the lead in any worldwide action that will be even partly successful.
For everyone, for you and for me, “the first requirement is to speak about the problem honestly: as a struggle for survival. This is the antithesis of the denialist approach. Once the stakes are precisely defined, the moral imperative is inescapable.” Start by telling yourself the truth.
We have to start saying out loud, to each other, that we love our children and our grandchildren with all our hearts, and we want to make it possible for them to live their full lives in some kind of comfort on this planet.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: The House by the Sea
May Sarton’s travels, in her mind…
click here
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2020 | Global climate change, Human Nature, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
actually, not an unthinkable thought…
“Owing in large measure to humankind’s
long, steadily accelerating career of habitat shattering,
the rate of extinction is currently
about a thousand times what is normal.
That’s how fast the planet’s biotic community
is losing member species these days…
I can’t get that extinction crisis out of my mind.
Extinction is not abstract in the least.
It’s the thousands of instances of the desolation
of being the last of one’s kind.”
Stephanie Mills, excerpt from “The One Who Steals the Fat,” The Sun magazine, January 2001
We’re not accustomed to thinking in truly absolute terms—think about it, extinction is the end.
Think again about your grandchildren.
Think again.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, History, Reflections, World history
It’s worth a second read…
Book review:
On the Beach
by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)
New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957
312 pages
I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories (Weltschmerz, perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.
Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.
All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.
The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.
Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.
I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
click here
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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