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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Independence Day

I am fond of vintage American history textbooks. Rifling through dumpsters, library discards, and second-hand bookstores, I cannot resist bringing them home when I find them. I am drawn to the temper of older histories, particularly ones written for students. Prior to the revisionist animus of the Sixties, school texts shared a sympathy for the […]

Mainstreaming Homosexuality

Homosexual behavior has been with us forever. Homosexuals elevated to an ethnicity separate from the rest of us—a Queer Nation—are recent phenomena. The successful fashioning of homosexuals as minorities, its members akin to a racial group or a protected species like pandas and black rhinos, trumps what is left of a normative approach to sexuality […]

Crowley, Hubbard, And The New Individualism

Straightaway, let me clarify. In the previous post I quoted  Ron Hubbard as saying: “The one super-secret sentence that Scientology is built on is ‘Do as thou wilt—that is the whole of the law.’” The words belong to L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., not Sr.. Speaking of Scientology, the son added: “It came from the black magic, […]

Aleister Crowley Lives

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. —Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and the nineteenth century’s enchantment with esoterica grew up together. Born in the year the Theosophical Society was founded, he was an Oxford educated, pansexual playboy, rock-climber, Swinburnian poet, yogi, cabalist, and something of a monster. He […]

Edmund Burke And Ourselves

  Edmund Burke was the greatest Parliamentary speaker during the reign of George III. He was a passionate defender of the colonies in their grievances against the king. Here in my hand is  a tiny 1908 edition of Burke’s Speech for Conciliation, delivered March 22, 1775. It is one of the treasures from last week’s […]

Time And A Turtle

Why did the snapping turtle cross the road? To lay eggs, of course. But you knew that. I had started the Subaru and was releasing the clutch before I saw a carapace big as my steering wheel in the rear view mirror. The town turtle was resting in the middle of the driveway, blocking me […]

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