Hammer Mill Days

Haven't you finished that symphony yet? Well, get going. You've got a piano concerto to write as well. Don't hurry or anything .... it's due to the publisher on Friday. That's today. Man, some of these deadlines are hard to meet, particularly when you're living in a crowded, leaky potting shed in the courtyard of your former sqauthouse, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. We're just trying to keep the ship afloat here, folks, and to do so we cannot limit ourselves to any single genre of music. That's why I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) composing music for hire. This week he's working on modern classical music ... long hair stuff. Marvin knows what that's all about. I plugged a Classical Gas album into his tape drive. With all the disruption, you'd think our mail wouldn't find us, but never underestimate the power of mail carriers to find their target. They dropped us a parcel of letters, postcards, and newsletters as thick a...

Former secretary of defense under Donald Trump James Mattis has a book out, so he's making the rounds of all the talk shows, talking about leadership, acting as though his reluctance to criticize the president is somehow rooted in personal integrity. What he won't talk about on the book tour is how his "leadership" responded to policies that any person of average integrity would take issue with. Mattis sat still when Trump started banning Muslims from entering the country. He said nothing when Trump began separating children from their parents at our southern border and putting them in cages. He was silent as Trump praised white supremacists as "good people" in the wake of Charlottesville. When did he finally throw in the towel? When Trump decided to remove troops from Syria. That tells you much of what you need to know about Mattis. Steve Inskeep's fawning interview on NPR had few high points. Somehow Mattis saw fit to claim: "From a Roman gen...