Today's Stories

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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"For an Idea, It Sounds a Quart Low"

I Get a Horse

By ROBERT DAY

"The schoolteacher who writes about us says he's going to get a horse to ride to town," says Mencken.

"What for?" asks Ed Earl.

"Groceries. Brown's Hardware. Potted flowers like he puts out in spring.”

"I mean why?"

"Save money on gas, I'd guess. Frugality in general."

I am the schoolteacher Mencken Cody and Ed Earl Williams are talking about. I am not there. It is a meeting of the Committee to Save the World, at the co-op in Bly, Kansas. It only takes two to have a meeting.

It is coming wheat harvest. Most of us don't have time right now to save the world, so it won't be long before Mencken and Ed Earl pile into their pickups.

Gas is crawling toward $4 a gallon. Diesel fuel is crawling uphill as well. The high-dollar wheat these men hope to sell could take a bad hit if you count the price of the fuel to bring it in.

But for the moment they are meditating over coffee about what they've heard I'm going to do.

"For an idea it sounds a quart low," says Ed Earl.

"It's a quart you don't have to add to your crankcase," says Mencken. "Besides, it's turning the clock back to better days."

"Clocks run straight on," says Ed Earl. "That's why you push up daisies sooner or later."

"I had a horse as a boy," says Mencken. "Rode it to school a couple of times for the pleasure of it. I had to leave early and come home late. The world goes slower on a horse."

"Three to four miles an hour," says Ed Earl. "Slow even for government work. Time's money."

"My dad used to say the outside of a horse is good for the inside of the man. It jiggles your innards for exercise. Besides, what's time to a horse?"

"Does he know about horses?" asks Ed Earl.

"I saw him riding the Holste horse the other day. He bounces off the saddle at a trot, but he doesn't steer a horse by pulling on one rein then the other like that woman from the East Coast did. He's got a proper saddle. Not a cut down model. He can ride. Worked cattle near Hays, I think."

They look into their coffee to study about me riding a horse to town and what kind of talk that will start.

"If he'd get a horse that could pull a wagon," says Ed Earl, "I'd ask him to pick up a few things and skip a trip to town. He could carry his potted flowers easier as well."

"It costs me $3 here and back to drive my truck," says Mencken.

"A horse costs something," says Ed Earl.

"Figure the farrier bill and the vet like tires and oil," says Mencken. "Figure feed like gas, though a round bale would feed a horse for a month. But let's say it's even. You save insurance."

"Only if you sell your truck," says Ed Earl. "Just sitting your pickup costs money every month like you were using it. A man would have to give up the use of his truck to come out ahead."

"A man loses the use of his pickup in this country and it's like losing the use of his ... ."

"Don't say it out loud," says Ed Earl. "He'll put it in what he writes and that will cause all kinds of trouble for us."

They are quiet for awhile. Others of the Committee to Save the World would have been here by now if they were coming. The coffee pot is foaming black goo at the bottom. There is sunshine in the work day ahead of us.

I am heading to the Oliva farm to see if they need me to drive their grain truck. As I go by the co-op I notice Ed Earl’s and Mencken's pickups. But I have promises to keep.

"How's he going to write about what we said without him being here?" asks Mencken.

"Somebody will let him know," says Ed Earl.

"I hope by the time he tells on us he's got his horse," says Mencken.

"With a wagon," says Ed Earl, standing up to drive to town.


Robert Day is author of the novel "The Last Cattle Drive." An adjunct professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., he wrote this comment for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan.

 

 

 

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