There are two types of "money" competing with each other in America today as our economy enters the final stages of a deflationary economic collapse. First is the after-tax true-labor result of working people in the economy -- the fruit of honest work by regular people. This "money" is the sum result of sweat, blood, tears and toil by working class Americans and accurately reflects the economic output of this great country we call home.

Unfortunately this honest value is overwhelmed by the second type of "money" -- and therein rests the root of out current economic catastrophe. A catastrophe, I might add, the president and his current crop of congressional underlings seem little interested in avoiding. Of cou... Read More

I Always Wanted to Know an Atticus Finch

And yet I never quite met him. I never found him in any of my coaches, my teachers, my friends, the fathers of my friends and even my beloved father never had that perfect pitch of character while he still ranks as the greatest inspiration to my manhood. I once had a minister that came close, who was also the father two of my friends, but he could never turn a phrase like Atticus. Ronald Reagan seemed about the closest, but I never actually met "The Great Communicator," so I'll have to strike "The Gipper" from contention.

No, I think I may go to my grave never knowing an Atticus Finch, but I am so very thankful that Harper Lee had a father, who helped her live such a life to inspire her to write ... Read More

Andrew Wyeth May Have Passed But His Art Will Live On

When I was much younger, back in the early 1970's, and trying to find my way in this world of good and bad art, music and movies, I searched for living artists of quality to guide me as I sought my own path, and I discovered Andrew Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth was already middle aged and had produced some of his best work, including but not limited to; Christina's World, Evening at Kuerners, Master Bedroom, Karl and Winter 1946.

Winter 1946, a self portrait of when Andrew was a boy running in a brown field of dead and dormant grass a short distance from where his father, N.C. Wyeth, was killed when his stalled car was hit by a train, now hangs in the North Carolina Museum of Art. It was the ... Read More

Arlington Cemetery

Washington, District of Columbia is one of the most important cities in the world. It is a young city, even by The United States of America's standards; but considering the legislation and executive decisions that have been made within its limits over the last 70 years, it is unarguably, the most important city in the world over that period. The southern, across from Virginia, side of Washington, D.C. is the most significant: architecturally and in regards to the city planning and design.

That city's design began with George Washington himself. The newly elected (by the electoral college only) president picked the location for the capital to be planned and built across the Potomac River from land he owned had once ow... Read More

Sergio Leone’s Classic Film Almost Died on the Cutting Room Floor

As I mentioned in my forgotten review, Spring, 2009, of one of Sergio Leone’s best films: “Once Upon a Time in the West,” I wrote that I would eventually take a look at his next, even better film, “Once Upon a Time in America” in that same Forgotten Classics section of our Better Angels Now. And yes, as strange as it may seem, this film almost died a classic death on the cutting room floor, when it was released in theaters, in 1984, in the United States at 139 minutes of runtime.

The film was intended, by Director Leone, to be much longer: It was 227 minutes when it was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival. Sadly, this was the only ti... Read More

Martin Scorsese Keeps the Impregnable Island Central to His Story

The great director also turned my mind inside out, as I struggled to conceive the point nd purpose of his lavish film, which examined the inner recesses of a damaged mind. By the end of the film, with my mind struggling to reconcile this story’s many twists that suggest the realty within Scorsese’s surreal depiction of the upside down existence of his protagonist, Detective Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, I took stock of the story and rationalized: I‘ll definitely have to purchase the DVD or my curiosity will never know true peace.

If only it could be that easy for the probing detective. Actor DiCaprio has come a long way from the cute pu... Read More