Blog / Our America

Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now?

December 16, 2020 - By Ward Schumaker

When my son was young we’d read a book or two each night before he went to sleep, and invariably he’d ask for just one more. For that extra read, one title became my favorite: Marvin K. Mooney Won’t You Please Go Now, by Dr. Seuss: “The time has come! The time is now! JUST GO, GO, GO! I DON’T CARE HOW! Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now?!” As refrains go, this one was useful in persuading my son that it was finally time for to go to sleep.

Today I find the book relevant again. Why won’t Donald Trump and the G.O.P. just accept the will of the people and move on? I’m not the first to think the book germane to politics: Wikipedia tells me that, back in 1974 during the Watergate affair, the columnist Art Buchwald...

Decommisioned: An Obituary

December 9, 2020 - By Daniel Nevárez Araújo

Photo: University of Central Florida

the soul, after all
doesn’t exist by itself
it needs to take the form
of the things it inhabits…
-Elidio La Torre Lagares, from Arecibo Observatory

On December 1st, I woke up to the news that the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory had collapsed. A cable holding the main platform in place snapped, sending the structure crashing down early in the morning. The news was first shared by local meteorologist Deborah Martorell and would soon spread like wildfire on local and international news outlets. The vast majority of my friends as well as public figures expressed...

Game Theory

November 25, 2020 - By Jim Hicks

(Photo: Bengt Ekeroth and Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal, 1957. © Svensk Filmindustri. Ingmar Bergman, director)

So, is it just a game for them, with us? If you think it through, that simple idea would make their every move not simply justifiable, but impeccable. Even in the endgame, a true master sees room for maneuver, an occasion for thumbing his nose, macho display for the masses or for the record books. In that most martial—and most US—of sports, when your team can’t move forward, they still bury the ball deep in enemy territory, trusting their defense, waiting, expecting to strike again. The only goal is to crush the opposition, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. That’s how the game is played...

What's the News in Trumpworld?

November 23, 2020 - By Marya Zilberberg

It’s so fitting that the Trump era has ushered in toilet paper shortages in the US. Should the current coup attempt somehow still succeed, and we find ourselves in an endless loop of rule-by-tweet-from-the-gilded-toilet known as Trumpworld, fear not, my fellow Americans—we Soviet refugees can teach you a lot about how to get along without.

When my family came to the US from Odessa in 1977, we had never seen saran wrap, sandwich baggies, or paper towels. We survived just fine. And you’ll be fine too, or at least you’ll be forced to pretend to be fine. Let me tell you how to manage, while at the same time leveraging that reviled organ of propaganda, the purveyor of fake news, the newspaper.

In the USSR, newspapers were revered, not reviled. They, or...

Love Poem and Response

November 15, 2020 - By Roque Dalton and Katherine Silver

(Photo: Lines from Roque Dalton's Poema de Amor on a wall near the offices of Al Otro Lado in Tijuana, México, courtesy of Katherine Silver)
 

Roque Dalton