Reading List

     While Donald Trump and Peter Hegseth's supposedly butched-up military machine is stumbling its way through a war of choice in the Middle East, incompetently led and sometimes reluctantly (but competently) served, it might be time for touch of perspective on current events.  So here are some suggested readings:

     "The Screwfly Solution," by Racoona Sheldon (Alice Sheldon, more famous as "James Tiptree, Jr.")
     The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
     Practically anything by Ursula K. LeGuin -- I'm presently enjoying The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, a 2002 collection of her short fiction.

     All of them examine power, and how things break, and how helpless so many people are willing to be while it happens, and (in some cases), how it might begin to heal.  We're presently oversupplied with boys who like the sound of smashing altogether too well -- social norms, people's lives, economies, edifices, anything that looks even a little fragile.  But there is a season for all things, and they mustn't be allowed to pursue ruin forever.