By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Close to 300 friends and followers of Birmingham musician Wayne Perkins, many from the east side of town who came of age in the 1970s listening to the Alabama Power Band play at The Crossroads in Roebuck, nearly filled the Steiner Auditorium at the Birmingham Museum of…
Editor’s Note – Samuel Langhorne Clemens was once so down and out, broke and desperate in San Francisco that he took a loaded pistol and aimed it at his head. He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, maybe out of sheer cowardice. He picked up a pen instead and wrote The Celebrated Jumping Frog…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Have you ever thought you lost something and then discovered it wasn’t lost after all? That’s how I felt Wednesday night winding down for sleep after watching a show on Netflix. Checking the calendar on the iPhone, it occurred to me it’s coming up on 10 years…
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT – CNN’s Dana Bash speaks with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Part 1 of Dana Bash’s interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz, their first since the Democratic National Convention. In part 2 of the interview with CNN’s…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – To be brutally honest? Or to project an image of success at all times? Are you interested in pretense? Or the unabashed truth? Shakespeare never had any of his characters ask these questions. At least not to the best of my recollection. Of course the very idea…
Connecting the Dots – By Glynn Wilson – Computer hacker-programmers have been creating bots to do various things since the 1990s. Bot is short for robot, although these bots don’t look like the robots from science fiction going back to the 1950s. If you use any search engine to ask “what is a bot?” you…
“A story told is a life lived.” – Unknown The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS, Md. – If the story of the 21st century is just going to end up being one hellscape disaster after another, until most of the countries of the world live under tyrannical dictators who ignore all…
Secret Vistas – By Glynn Wilson – SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, Va. — You don’t have to travel to some high mountain pass to find insight in this mixed up world. But maybe it helps. It seemed to help Moses, George Mallory and Elisha Mitchell, as I’ve written in the past. Climbing Mountains For Inspiration: What’s…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Another American media outlet is rocked by a self-inflicted scandal. It’s not clear what National Public Radio’s business editor Uri Berliner was thinking when he decided to bash his employer as “liberal” on a Substack newsletter run by a known conservative flame thrower, Bari…
Staff Report – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a bipartisan coalition of 41 Attorneys General around the country to demand that Meta address the recent increase in Facebook and Instagram platform account takeovers by scammers. Account takeovers happen when bad actors break into a user’s account and change passwords, effectively…
Cyberattack and ‘Security Breach’ Cited on Day Two – Staff Report – WASHINGTON, D.C. — What will poor people do who have become totally dependent on social media accounts when the accounts go down and don’t work? Maybe get outside and go for a hike? Millions of people were locked out of their Meta accounts…
A Painting and Poem by Janet Mego – Hurt feelings. Cancer. Never knowing What’s the answer. Highway 43: rush hour Politicians: too much power. Record Heat Spoiled meat Tax breaks available to The Elite Severe depression Textbook obsession Making it on time to Your next session Climate change World War III Smog, fear, and pestilence…
A Deep Dive into when Ronnie Vann Zant asked Wayne Perkins to join the band – Blast From the Past – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I like it. Yes I do. One of the gods of rock once wrote that in the early 1970s and sang…
Editor’s Note: To Build a Fire is a short story by American author Jack London. John Griffith Chaney was his real name. He was born on Jan. 12, 1876 and died on Nov. 22, 1916 at the age of 40 on the sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch in Glen Ellen, California. London…
Under the Microscope – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound? This, of course, is an age old thought experiment that is tinged with the stink of Anthropocentrism, homocentricism, or if you like, human…
Editor’s Note: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” is a line from an editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church. Written in response to a letter by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asking whether Santa Claus was real, the editorial was first published in the New York newspaper The Sun on September 21, 1897. “Is There a Santa…
By Jeff Kao, ProPublica, and Priyanjana Bengani, Tow Center for Digital Journalism – ProPublica – “My sisters have died,” the young boy sobbed, chest heaving, as he wailed into the sky. “Oh, my sisters.” As Israel began airstrikes on Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, posts by verified accounts on X, the social…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Do you like reading news online but hate paywalls and popup ads? There is a solution. But it will take a smart law firm to file the right kind of legal case against Google and Meta to bring it about. It has long been…
Staff Report – Freedom of the Press Foundation – An Alabama newspaper publisher and reporter were arrested last week and charged under a grand jury secrecy statute for the “crime” of reporting on a grand jury subpoena provided by a source. The publisher, Sherry Digmon, was arrested again — this time for soliciting ads from…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. — As wars continue to rage in Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine, and the Republicans still can’t seem to find a Speaker of the House they can get behind, what is the American public paying attention to and concerned about these days? Judging by what people seem to be interested in…
