Retailers used to rely on window dressing to lure customers into their stores.
When I was small, Lisbon Street in Lewiston was a retail shopper’s paradise. Driving through downtown Lewiston today reveals a shabbiness and lack of any retail options I’m interested in. There are a handful of eateries, but mostly storefronts with dirty windows. Continue reading
Sometimes I play a little game. Thinking back, I try to remember a time when things seemed simpler, less confusing. While it’s impossible to stop the march of time, and in many ways, I realize that life has taught me valuable lessons, I occasionally wonder whether history swings on pivotal moments and decisions.
It can be comforting thinking back to a prior time. Often, it’s when we were younger, now believing that things were better. There is certainly an element of nostalgia inherent in that process, but to merely chalk it up to slipping on rose-colored glasses is missing a larger point, I think. Continue reading
George Packer: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.”
Anyone born around 1960 entered the world in the midst of America’s longest-running period of prosperity. This economic boom began after World War II, extending out for another 25 to 30 years and ended in 1973.
American economic cycles have always been characterized by boom and bust periods. Even during what some call “The Golden Age of Capitalism,” the time frame between 1945 and 1973, there were recessions during 1945, 1948, 1953, 1957, and 1960. There are a variety of explanations and theories about why these fluctuations occur. Continue reading
Foreclosures in America are at a crisis level.
We can debate whether or not owning property is an American birthright. Home ownership, however, is part and parcel of a dream that we’ve all been sold on since before we could walk. What does 10 million foreclosures say about that dream?
Most anyone reading that number is likely to have a couple of reactions, I’m guessing. One, where did the 10,000,000 number come from? I’ll get to that in a moment. By the way, 10,000,000 is a number that represents the number of people making up the population of the state of Michigan, America’s 10th most populated state. Continue reading
The George Zimmerman verdict denotes a nation at a crossroads. Maybe we’ve already crossed some kind of line of demarcation. Post-racial America? Maybe if you’re a Beltway elite you think that. For those of us keeping score elsewhere, I contend we’re not at all.
While the Zimmerman trial garnered the lion’s share of coverage via the MSM, other news stories continued to trickle out.
Rolling Stone magazine, once the quintessential rock rag, featured Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its recent cover. Predictably, the binary, black/white moralists were outraged, claiming that Rolling Stone “glamorized” Tsarnaev, giving him the “rock star” treatment. If you actually read the article, a nuanced, well-written piece by Janet Reitman, you might come away with the idea, like I did that circumstances and ideological persuasion can change people, turning docile, well-liked young men into cold-blooded killers. Continue reading
I’m reading Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges. The book’s been on my shelf for a year and for some reason, I took it down two nights ago and began reading it.
Actually, I’ve been on a bit of a Hedges kick the past few weeks, having reread his engrossing and enlightening, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments. It’s a book about theology, or at least theological concepts without being religious—if that makes any sense. It’s at least a theology that is rooted in this world and one I can stomach. Continue reading