A definition of winter

by David Benjamin “Winter is icumen in,/ Lhude sing Goddamm,/ Raineth drop and staineth slop,/ And how the wind doth ramm!/ Sing: Goddamm…” — Ezra Pound, “Ancient Music”   MADISON, Wis.—When does winter start? Although I’ve seen a hell of a lot of winter by now, I hesitate to pin down the exact moment that…

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Choosing reality

by David Benjamin “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?” — J.R.R. Tolkien   PARIS — The first college classroom I ever entered contained a long table, at the head of which presided John Bennett, a reputedly distinguished…

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Shaking the dust

by David Benjamin “… I don’t have good news. [The Artistic Committee] were interested in participating but the language was of great concern. ACT is very firm about not using swear words or using the Lord’s name in vain. Also our audiences frown upon any ‘f’ words so we really keep the dialog clean …”…

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Notre escalier

by David Benjamin  “Stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly.”  — Blaise Pascal   PARIS — When I’m out and around, I don’t think about the stairs. I just face them when I get home and slog my way up—more slowly than when we bought this place—five floors up and just beneath the…

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The atomic mother-in-law

by David Benjamin “… I couldn’t help anyone because I… was seriously injured. My entire face and both of my hands were burnt. I went home to Midori-machi stepping over the bodies of the injured and the dead. They looked like forgotten baggage…”   —Woman quoted in  The Witness of Those Two Days: Hiroshima &…

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She might have cookies

by David Benjamin “… Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” — Robert Frost, Mending Wall MADISON, Wis. — The East Side of this town is one of…

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The Sirens of High-Tech and the Second Jew

by David Benjamin “Who IS this guy? and why is he writing for EE Times?” — The “SemiSisters” MADISON, Wis. — Eight women extremely prominent in high technology management and marketing — all better educated than me — have composed a manifesto (https://www.3dincites.com/2021/07/smartphone-addiction-is-not-a-gender-specific-problem/) renouncing an essay published under my byline in the tech journal, EE…

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Sunny, one so true…

by David Benjamin  MADISON, Wis. — One of the reviews of my book, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked, which is sort of a memoir, took note of the fact that I had let my dad off the hook for his human frailties and flagrant unfatherliness. The reviewer thought I should have…

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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of soul…

by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — As I consider a Postal Service targeted for vivisection by a paranoid narcissist and run by a fatcat hitman with a dirty scalpel, I scroll through my lifelong romance — with stamps and parcel post, love letters and amiable, unflappable mailcarriers. My first mailman was twenty minutes late every…

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Siberia for naughty boys

  by David Benjamin “I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels.”  — Donald John Trump MADISON, Wis. — If, around 1960, I’d been a kid in the Soviet Union, it would have been my own private Siberia. If I’d been a kid in France, Devil’s…

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