“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.” – Arthur C. Clarke Translation: Greetings from the Land of the Anishinaabe, who are comprised of the Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa),…
September 4, 2025 I’ll admit it: I’m a Star Trek fan. But not a hardcore, “go to the conventions” style fan. Over the years, I’ve watched The Original Series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNG), a bit of Voyager, Discovery, and lately, Enterprise. Never DS9, which is a flaw in me, I’ve been told. Thanks to…
August 4, 2025 Recently, I penned an opinion piece in the Tulsa World on the ways in which America is throwing away one of its most cost-effective methods of persuasion on the world stage: soft power. The Tulsa World version (limited to 600 words) is here. This came from a discussion I had with my…
September 24, 2024 “The New World forgets everything The Old World forgets nothing.” I FINALLY finished my summer reading project. Whew. “The Rediscovery of America” by Yale professor Ned Blackhawk, is not a light, summer beach read. It’s a large, textbook-sized tome (with 100 pages of notes!) that presents an in-depth picture of what happened…
You positively gotta love Canada. Besides the obvious, they seem to produce a lot of good, high-quality television that’s…nice. Very approachable shows that give us Americans a glimpse into their so much more diverse society. We’ve done a lot of bingeing during the pandemic and two of our fave Canadian imports have been “Anne of…
For Father’s Day weekend this year, I bring you a pic of my step-grandfather, Joe Duran. This is his certificate of naturalization in 1944 and recently found in a safe deposit box, along with his original birth certificate. He was brought from the Hacienda de Burras (more now known by the nearby San Jose de…
Back in the Summer I sat with a visitor at my church, the adult chaperone of 15 Iraqi high school students who were touring parts of the U.S., learning about the various career choices that might be available to them. After visiting Vermont, and then Oklahoma, they went to Washington D.C. before heading back to their school…