by Richard Subber | Nov 3, 2026 | Human Nature, Tidbits
Live your seasons…
“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Rumi) (1207-1273)
13th century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic
You took what was valuable from your leaves…
let the old leaves nourish the earth,
and grow new leaves.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 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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by Richard Subber | Oct 29, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Revolutionary War
The British stopped fighting…
Book review:
The Men Who Lost America:
British Leadership,
the American Revolution,
and the Fate of the Empire
by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (b1959)
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013
466 pages
O’Shaughnessy takes the unusual approach of writing nine detailed biographies of the men in the British government whose collective decisions and actions culminated in the loss of the North American colonies during the Revolutionary War.
The Men Who Lost America is a dispassionate debunking of the schoolboy history myth that Washington and his brave Continental Army troops survived the Valley Forge winter to beat the British at Yorktown in 1781, and win the war. Huzzah!
Of course the British—from King George III to his key ministers to the generals and admirals who tried to follow their orders—wanted to win the war. Of course they did.
Nevertheless, The Men Who Lost America lays out the numerous ways that these men never got around to sending enough troops and ships to subdue the American rebels. They never had a war-winning reserve of troops and ships to send, because they were too busy trying to secure their Caribbean sugar island colonies against French and Spanish attacks, and too busy fighting imperial military actions in Canada, Gibraltar, and India.
In fact, O’Shaughnessy demonstrates that the British were not totally defeated in North America. In simple terms, the men who “lost America” finally stopped fighting a war they finally realized they could not win.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire Divided
King George and his ministers
wanted the Caribbean sugar islands
more than they wanted the 13 colonies…
by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
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Empyrean: new poems with 57 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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by Richard Subber | Oct 22, 2026 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
certain particulars…
“A human being has roots
by virtue of his real, active and natural participation
in the life of a community
which preserves in living shape
certain particular treasures of the past
and certain particular expectations of the future…”
Simone Adolphine Weil (1909-1943)
from The Need for Roots 1949
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
The Reader (Der Vorleser)
Not just a rehash of WWII…
by Bernhard Schlink
–
many waters: more poems with 53 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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by Richard Subber | Oct 18, 2026 | Human Nature, Reflections
such gentle tendernesses…
Movie review:
Driving Miss Daisy
I guess it’s fair to say that every old lady who can’t drive any more needs a guy like Hoke Colburn to take her where she needs to go.
Even if she’s almost too cranky for words.
Jessica Tandy is the almost inexpressively cranky old lady named Daisy Werthan, who keeps on giving Hoke (played by Morgan Freeman) a run for his money every time he takes her for a run in her big old car down there in Alabama. At first she doesn’t seem to mind much at all that Hoke is a black man. Maybe the fact that she’s an old Jewish lady has something to do with that.
A couple subplots in Driving Miss Daisy (1989, rated PG, 99 minutes) are welcome extensions of what becomes the blossoming relationship between Hoke and Miss Daisy.
You don’t need to work too hard to figure out how the story ends.
You do need to keep watching with love in your heart, right up to the end, so you can feel the luxury of a good ending, and watch one of the best movie endings you’re likely to see: there are almost indescribably gentle tendernesses.
Almost forgot: there is a filmed version of a 2013 Australian theater production of Driving Miss Daisy starring Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones. It’s not as good as the 1989 movie. Ditto for the 1992 TV version starring Joan Plowright and Robert Guillaume.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
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many waters: more poems with 53 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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by Richard Subber | Oct 4, 2026 | History, Reflections, Tidbits, World history
OK, it’s not “Take Five”…
Music to Nikkal’s ears
It’s been about 3,500 years since anyone dusted off a lyre to play this Hurrian hymn (H6) dedicated to the Akkadian goddess Nikkal-wa-Ib, the goddess of orchards whose name means “Great Lady and Fruitful.”
The words and music were discovered about 70 years ago in the ruins of Ugarit, an ancient Syrian city. It took about 20 years to interpret the inscriptions on the cuneiform tablets.
Michael Levy, a musician/composer whose specialty is ancient musical instruments, has embedded the original melody (listen here) in this composition with several themes, performed on a replica of an ancient lyre.
It’s not “Lay Down Sally” and it’s not “White Christmas” and it’s not “Take Five.”
It is an intriguing offering of what the Akkadians might have listened to when they were in the groove, when they were celebrating the festival of Nikkal.
It’s so easy for this music of the Bronze Age to survive for centuries.
It’s so easy to listen.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
“Fishering,” by Brian Doyle
…what meets the eye…
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Empyrean: new poems with 57 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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by Richard Subber | Sep 26, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
the doctor wants to help you,
you good with that?
Book review:
Black Man in a White Coat:
A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine
by Dr. Damon Tweedy
New York: Picador, 2015
294 pages
There is only one mystery about Black Man in a White Coat. The mystery existed for me before I read it. I had a more informed understanding of the mystery after I read it. Why is Tweedy’s story so damnably true?
Tweedy is a black doctor in a world with mostly white doctors, a world with too many people who disdain black doctors or don’t want to be treated by them.
Read Dr. Tweedy’s candid and insightful story of his own life—professional and personal—walk a mile in his shoes, and then tell a friend how you feel about your own life.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
the beating hearts…by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 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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