Missive #585 Published 29 October 2025
These stories are not a dark as the the two novels by her that I have read. But they are strange or maybe weird is a more apt description. They are all very short short stories with the ebook being only 115 pages. An entertaining read which may not be liked by everyone but you might give it a try.
Missive #584 Published 27 October 2025
Now, in Against the American Grain, Gary Paul Nabhan—cultural ecologist, environmental historian, and lyric poet of the American Southwest—illuminates the outlines of a history too long in the shadows. Whether Indigenous, LatinX, priests, nuns, Quakers, or cross-cultural chameleons, it is the resisters, performers, grassroots organizers, nomads, and spiritual leaders from the desert margins who are constantly reshaping America. They have, against all odds, recolored and recovered the future of North America through outrageous acts of resistance.
Missive #583 Published 26 October 2025
Continuing The Anti-Federalist Papers
Federal Farmer II
by Federal Farmer
Missive #582 Published 24 October 2025
110. Nasruddin and the Wool
Nasruddin owed his neighbor money. “But don’t worry,” Nasruddin said. “I’ve got a plan!”
His neighbor looked doubtful. “Do tell!” he said.
“I planted some bramble bushes outside; you probably saw them. And you know how the shepherds drive their flocks down the road on their way to the pasture…? The wool from those passing sheep will get caught on the brambles. I’m going to harvest that wool, sell it, and that’s how I will pay you back.”
Nasruddin’s neighbor burst out laughing. “I don’t think you’ll ever pay me back,” he said, “but at least you keep me entertained!”
Missive #581 Published 22 October 2025
Claude is a Frenchman who lives in Dublin. His birthplace is famed as the city of lovers, but so far love has always eluded him. Instead his life revolves around the investment bank where he works. And then one day he realizes he is being followed around, by a pale, scrawny man. The man's name is Paul Murray.
I liked this book better than the two that I read previously by this author. Perhaps I'm learning how to read his satire but I found this book to be much funnier that the others. A recommend.
Missive #580 Published 19 October 2025
Continuing The Federalist Papers.
Federalist No.58
Objection That The Number of Members Will Not Be Augmented as the Progress of Population Demands Considered
Author: James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:
Missive #579 Published 17 October 2025
109. Nasruddin’s House with Many Windows
Nasruddin had built a new house, and there were many windows, big and small, in every wall.
“I’ve never seen a house with so many windows!” said Nasruddin’s neighbor.
“That’s my own design,” Nasruddin explained. “This new house has twenty windows! My old house had just one.”
“Why so many?” asked the neighbor.
“To stay warm in winter!” replied Nasruddin. “My old house became much warmer when I closed my window in the winter. Now when winter comes, I have twenty windows to close, so the house will be twenty times warmer. I won’t even need to light a fire!”
Missive #578 Published 14 October 2025
The Collapse of Antiquity, the sequel to Michael's …and forgive them their debts is the second and latest book in his trilogy on the history of debt. It describes how the dynamics of interest-bearing debt led to the rise of rentier oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome, causing economic polarization, widespread austerity, revolts, wars and ultimately the collapse of Rome into serfdom and feudalism. That collapse bequeathed to subsequent Western civilization a pro-creditor legal philosophy that has led to today's creditor oligarchies. In telling this story,The Collapse of Antiquity reveals the eerie parallels between the collapsing Roman world and today's debt-burdened Western economies.
Missive #577 Published 12 October 2025
Continuing The Anti-Federalist Papers
Federal Farmer II
by Federal Farmer
Missive #576 Published 11 October 2025
Domestic Enemies asks us to assume an America circa 2011 that has secret detention camps for ordinary citizens, an America with hyperinflation (gold $7000/ounce, gasoline $30/gallon), an America that has replaced the old paper currency with new blue bucks at a 1-for-10 exchange rate, an America where lawlessness in the big cities and political corruption everywhere exceeds anything seen in real third-world hellholes in 2006. Is this too much to swallow? You be the judge. The action in Domestic Enemies is exciting, and as plausible as you will find in works of fiction. The technical details, at least the ones where I have any expertise, are dead on. The question remains: Is the America of a few years hence portrayed in Domestic Enemies believable? This book addresses in fictional form a serious problem deserving of our attention: the problem of illegal immigration, anchor babies, and the long-term effects of a massive influx of people to our country who have no interest in adopting America s culture of individualism. My fear is that the nightmare conditions Bracken asks us to imagine for 2011 America are so far from what we have now, that mainstream readers (and reviewers) will dismiss his book as delusional ranting. That would be a grave error.