WHEN WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR., DEBATED THE MARXISTS Not long ago I watched an online video segment from conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr.’s old TV public affairs program, Firing Line. The year was 1968 and Buckley’s guests were two socialists, Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle, who were then running as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)
A personal reminiscence of a famous day in U.S. history. In the fall of 1963, Mrs. Blough enters our world to fuss and fret over every sign of life in her fifth grade classroom. As a teacher she is predisposed to nervousness, which makes you wonder just why she would choose a profession that
If mainstream politics is a petrified forest, there are signs of life at the grassroots. The way American politics works now, presidential election campaigns run on a perpetual cycle, beginning again almost as soon as they end. Yet despite the drawn out nature of political campaigns, they increasingly resemble rote public relations exercises in which
I saw Lou Reed perform only once. This was back in the mid-1970s at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater. A friend who worked at the Chicago Sun-Times found himself in possession of two complimentary tickets, courtesy of the paper’s music reviewer. Thus, we found ourselves one evening sitting somewhere in the first few rows, center section in
THOUGHTS ON ACUPUNCTURE, BODYWORK, AND HEALING EMOTIONAL TRAUMA There’s an old Cheech and Chong comedy routine called “Acupuncture” that features Tommy Chong as a traditional Chinese acupuncturist treating new patient Cheech Martin. The latter complains of chronic headache. He’s tried everything from hypnosis to yoga, standing on his head to Quaaludes and cocaine, he tells
MARK HARRIS 