The Intellectual Mosquito

Arrivederci, Rome, N.Y. . . . and Goodbye My Heart

Anthony P. Mario — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:57:35 -0500

We lived in a dream world, a bustling little town nestled into the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains that climb north from central New York into Canada. We grew up there in Rome, population 53,000, probably half of whom were Italian Americans. It was a Golden Age that began its ascent shortly after the atomic bomb brought World War II to an end. During th e l950's the construction of Giffiss Air Force Base, which began during the pre-war years, was ramped up for the challenge of the Cold War. In ten years Griffiss swelled into a giant Strategic Air...

THE PIG FARM: YOUR U.S. CONGRESS IN ACTION ON HEALTHCARE REFORM

Anthony P. Mario — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:44:23 -0500

THINK CONGRESS CARES A FIG ABOUT YOU, ME OR ANY AVERAGE CITIZEN? WAKE UP, READ ON AND LEARN THE TRUTH. Holy Crap! Where have I been? All these years I thought that gleaming white building on the hill in Washington, D.C.-- you know, the one with the elegant giant dome? I thought it was the Capitol Building. It was only recently that I discovered it's a pig farm! Imagine that. Who would have guessed? I stumbled on to this while researching what I've come to call "The Mud Bowl", the showdown between the Democrats and Republicans over the Health Care...

Anthony P. Mario — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:27:00 -0500

On Tobago For the first week he lay around, drying out, soaking up the sun sleeping under the palms opening a coconut or two catching fish with twine and a pin wallowing in leisure and blessed simplicity On the eighth day he sculled to the reef and tilted wreck. cut canvas for clothes then more for shelter and, anxious now, some for repairs Next day he brought back flour huge bloody bags of the stuff more flour than a man could use in a lifetime and, struck by a thought as he ate from a calabash bowl went back next...

THE RIGHT TO DIE

Anthony P. Mario — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:19:43 -0500

I am not suicidal. But at 67, I think about dying a lot more than I did ten years ago. What I think about the most is how I'm going to cross that last threshhold. I've even checked out my "healthy life expectancy" using Mortality Tables relied on by insurance companies and the federal government. "Healthy life expectancy " is the number of years a person might expect to live free of serious illness or disability. For me, when your healthy life expectancy runs out, it's good to know what you're going to do next. You need to have a...

STAND BY OUR STREET MUSICIANS

Anthony P. Mario — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:45:00 -0500

Some of the greatest performers, with stories we'll never know, sing and play their hearts out on the streets of cities all over the world. I've heard them in San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Paris and many others. Some are self-taught, others have had formal training. Either way, their talents and exacting performances are often inspiring and amazing. I am given to pause and ask myself, "Why is this gifted person out on the street?" Always, I wonder, "Why aren't people like this performing in respectable local clubs where they can make some decent money, get off the heartless streets and...

THE MIDDLE CLASS SHRINKS: IS THE AMERICAN DREAM DEAD?

Anthony P. Mario — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:13:22 -0500

The danger this country faces today is no less threatening than that created by the Attack on Pearl Harbor or the Nazi's swift conquest of Europe. It is a danger that pre-existed the 9/11 terrorist attack and gave rise to our national fear of a second, similarly horrifying event such as a maniacal Jihadist carrying an anthrax bomb into a Manhattan subway station. The danger in this instance comes from America's monied aristocracy, people who are as passionate their desire for money and power as Islamist terrorists are to bring down Western society. They are wealthy businessmen, investment giants, bankers...

Steroids For Rookie Poets

Anthony P. Mario — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:15:00 -0500

The first time a new swimmer confidently slides into the waters of Lake Poetry, truth greets him. He learns that below the still blue surface is a quagmire of poetic failures: dead first lines, stunted themes, gnarled thoughts and decayed ideas wrenched into bad poems. Not knowing the rudiments of gliding along smoothly with words, imagery, color, sound, and rythm,the swimmer loses energy, flails away madly until exhausted and broken, he sinks. Samuel Taylor Coleridge made it sound so easy. Writing good poetry, he said, is a matter of Putting the Best Words in the Best Order. Any literate person...

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF AMERICA (1950-2010)

Anthony P. Mario — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:22:55 -0500

It's looking more and more like the last days of Pompeii, the sin city of Italy that was smothered in the thick, broiling lava of Mt.Vesuvius over 1900 years ago.There's a Big Money orgy going on in our country right now that nobody seems to have a clue about. Maybe I'm wrong, but here's what I think is happening. The Wall Street thieves are bailing out, sending footlockers stuffed with cash overseas to exotic places with great beaches and no extradition treaties with the U.S.. Former CEO's and other tin horn "Captains of Industry" are vacuuming the last pennies out...

CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST TERRORISM: MURDER IN CHURCH

Anthony P. Mario — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:17:51 -0400

There was a sudden jolt of the Breaking News fanfare, a flurry of cable babble and the morning papers screaming their headlines about Dr. George Tiller's shooting. And then it was over. The event faded from view so rapidly that it occurred to me that we've become accustomed to frenzied anti-abortionists shooting doctors. We no longer recoil from these killings. After each one we pause, but ever so briefly. It's like driving up on a horrific accident. We get a dose of anxiety and a glimpse of the carnage as we slow to look. Seconds later we're back to normal...

Pump Up Your Intellect: Live Dangerously With Classical Music

Anthony P. Mario — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:35:00 -0400

If you haven't basked in the full-throated burst of sound from a symphony orchestra or heard the verve and zest of a Mozart piano quintet fill up a room, then a full, lush life is escaping you. You don't like classical music? No, you just think you don't like it. Okay, if you've been force fed modern classical, then I understand -- you hate classical music. Yet you love music! There isn't a moment of the day when you're not listening to it, if you can help it.But like me, you've been hooked on rock, rythm and blues, country and...