Claude Monet was born with the gift of seeing things new and without any necessary devotion to denotation. Yet in later life, he saw almost nothing. What filtered through the cataracts – was he painting what was, or what seemed to be?
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We recently lost one of the greatest minds on the planet when physicist Stephen Hawking died at age 76. Much has been written about the man’s accomplishments, and I suspect this will continue to be the case for a long time – perhaps centuries. I have nothing to add to those analyses, but, being the publisher of a site called
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Justice. Fairness. Sacrifice. Service. Humility. Aren’t these qualities on which we Americans pride ourselves? Few people were more in the news in 2017 than former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the man who touched off a massive cultural battle over his decision to kneel for the playing of the national anthem during the 2016 season. Oddly, he continued to
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Our lives are full of Kodak moments.
Read more2016 has snuffed another brilliant light. Sharon Jones, one of the icons of the neo-Soul revival in the last decade, is dead of cancer at the age of 60. Scholars & Rogues honors the heart and soul of Daptone Records.
Read moreDylan is one of the greatest artists of his time. But his genius wasn’t about Literature. Part 1 of a series. The Nobel Committee today awarded American folk icon Bob Dylan its annual prize for Literature. Not surprisingly, reactions have been mixed. I’m a bit torn myself. There is no questioning at all the immensity of Dylan’s artistic accomplishments, and
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Not everybody loved The Greatest: what Muhammad Ali meant to one racist Southern kid That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation. – Hunter S. Thompson
Read moreAudre Lorde taught us that power begins with knowing and accepting ourselves. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t. It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. The reading list for the contemporary poetry
Read moreScholars & Rogues has been around for seven and a half years or so, and during that time we have evolved. Early on we were a political blog with a culturalist bent. These days we’re a “journal of progressive culture” – in a nutshell, we’re a culture blog informed by a strong political foundation. Our writing wanders far and wide,
Read moreNo one could possibly be THE voice of Gen X, but Cobain was certainly A voice of my generation. In their seminal 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?, published in 1993, Neil Howe and William Strauss argued that the only thing Generation Xers really agreed on was that there was no such thing as Generation X. Given the inherent irony
Read moreWalt Whitman once said, “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.” You could look it up. – Annie Savoy My grandfather used to tell stories about his sister, my aunt Janie. She played baseball. Not softball, but baseball. And was better than most of
Read moreThis is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back. – Bono When we hear talk about “markets” and “capitalism” and “business,” especially as such things are fetishized in the corporate media (think about how The Apprentice franchise has apparently made Donald Trump, a barking conspiracy theorist whose companies have declared bankruptcy four times and who has
Read moreI have been known to say that William Gibson is arguably the most important author of the past 30 years. That’s a mouthful of an assertion, especially since we’re talking about a genre writer, I know. But even if I’m wrong, I’m not off by much. The man who more or less invented Cyberpunk, then abandoned it as quickly as he
Read moreWhen I’m not trying to learn about photography or earn money to pay the bills, I’m the publisher at Scholars & Rogues. One of our traditions there has always been the honoring of a “scrogue” on our masthead – someone whose life and career we admire. It’s a pretty cool list of folks we have tribbed through the years, and
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lullaby pit 