Last Bender

Untitled If my father calls I go Among strange letters of a foe I tread the ladder of his breath Ascend my son he says to rest I cannot hold the bird in place And see no throne or face A voice across the valley goes It startles flocks of crows A pack of ruffled [...]

  The NYT today reviewed the new HBO series Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a good review. The reviewer says at one point that HBO at its best is a corporate auteur making television that examines institutions and how they fall apart. Deadwood is The West, The Sopranos is The Mafia, The Wire is The [...]

SO MUCH PRETTY  Two things first: Cara is a friend of mine, and this review contains spoilers galore. I can’t pretend to any true objectivity then. But I will be honest, I felt some trepidation reading my friend’s book. It was not on account of her technical abilities as a writer. Our friendship is fed [...]

  Radioactive Wastewater We in Ithaca  recently found out that 20 million gallons of radioactive hydrofracking wastewater was dumped in Cayuga Lake. It was dumped at water treatment plants that could not handle the flow or level of particulates, much less chemicals, in the water. This is the water we drink. The local papers are [...]

A book just crossed my desk called AEROTROPOLIS: the way we’ll live next. Quick, what the fuck could an aerotropolis be? Will we live in the air? Cities with hovercraft and skyways, vertical glass needles full of people, pets and things? No, it’s a book by a couple of businessmen about organizing the city of [...]