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[:4622:]Curtis / SYNAPSE-SHOTS 2010-40

SYNAPSE-SHOTS 2010-40

L’AFFAIRE SHERROD –

J’ACCUSE LA PERILOUS 24/7 PRECIPICE

I will not go so far as Keith Olbermann and equate the experience of Shirley Sherrod to the Dreyfus Affair. However, if information had traveled as fast at the turn of the last century as it does now, perhaps the trumped-up charges against Captain Alfred Dreyfus might have cleared h ...

This is a paeon to Rosa Jiménez of Venezuela. For the past five years, she has been a student and assistant in the graduate studies program at San Diego State University. Since her arrival, we have been tutor/tutée and friends. Our conversations have been limitless in their explorations of language, history, culture, music, politics and the universe.

Since Rosa will be returning home next month, I thought it meet and proper to encapsulate her tenure here in words that may provide h ...

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[:4622:]Curtis / SYNAPSE-SHOTS 2010-38

SYNAPSE-SHOTS 2010-38

JAMES the THIRD

AMONG the LEADING HERD

The “herd,” in this case, is the sluggish alternate energy movement, which includes both industry and government. While government is tied down with politics, industry, with GE leading the pack, keeps chugging along at home and abroad.

My nephew James W. Richardson III, is a part of that GE tea ...

GRAMMAR with a HAMMER

Two verbs we cannot separate,

No matter how we try –

No matter how they irritate –

They’re simply, “lay’ and “lie.”

For, “lay” needs an object to work,

Whichever   – off the shelf.

To lie upon one’s bed ’sno quirk,

Since one lays down oneself.

“Now, I lay me down to sleep,” is

A well-known verse to most.

“ ‘Reflexive’, I marked on the quiz,”

One may be proud to boast.

While on one hand, one says, “I lay,”

That’s speaking in the past.

But, should one want “to ...

iPhone Emits a Wry Tone

An ominous rush fell over the hall. Steve Jobs, Apple’s iconic marketing guru, could not obtain a signal. Here he was in his usual competent (some say, “Overcompetent) mode, demonstrating the latest and 4 ^th issue of the wildly popular iPhones. Frustrated, Steve blamed the audience for his inability to attain a WIFI signal: “If some of you guys would stop texting…”

Several days later, the reports started coming in. People were complaining that, when they held ...

“MEL”-TDOWNS’ PATERNAL PARTICIPATION

Mel Gibson’s excesses are becoming legend. He is running out of races and religions to disparage. Although it may appear that his raging is booze-based, that well may not be the only cause of his affliction. Imagining what might have been the atmosphere in the household in which he grew up, could place Mel’s dilemma in a clearer light. Living under the thumb of a martinetish, virulently anti-Semitic, Holocaust deniers, whose genius IQ might have made ...

THE DUMB-EMPIRE MODEL

How many fallen empires does it take to keep another one from following suit? Considering the world’s long history and our relatively short one, there appears to be plenty of room, yet, on that framework of former, stupid world-shaker governments After forming cohesive societies, they develop technologically and seek to expand. Therein lies the problem; apparently, that expansion is too heady to be controlled. Of course, that lack of control masks the fact that, whi ...

McCHRYSTAL “CRACK’D”!!!

General Stanley McChrystal, in charge of our military efforts in Afghanistan , is certain to be fired, in short order. In the most explosive commanding general / commander-in-chief debacle since MacArthur-Truman, McChrystal, in an exclusive “Rolling Stone” magazine report, vehemently and personally has trashed the president, his staff, ambassadors – and some senators, to boot. Since being informed by the magazine of what to expect in print, the general has issued s ...

JIM CROW:

HIS BIRTH, MIRTH and DEARTH of WORTH

(Jim Crow is buried, but he is not dead. Here is the long-obscure origin of Jim Crow and his descendants. David S. Reynolds, in the following extract from his book, “Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson ,” lays out a succinct review of how popular entertainment played into the formulation of our national attitudes surrounding race. It is the basis of much of the mythology and pathology that has buffeted this society up to the pres ...

The Question upon which Chris Crumbles

Chris Matthews, who heads MSNBC’s, “Hardball,” has cobbled together an exposé of the Tea Party movement, entitled, “The Rise of the New Right”

Boldly, he connects gun-toting militia folk -- with an unvarnished disdain for, “government” -- to non-uniformed, apparently more respectable, types already in government and others hoping to be in government.

Among the latter is Dr. Rand Paul, who recently became the GOP candidate for next fall’s s ...