jameswagner.com

Yeah, the address in the caption above is intentional. Paul Auster has a piece about the American heartland in today's NYTimes. It's a good read. This is an excerpt.Crazy New York, inspiring New York, fractious New York, ugly New York,...

On almost-the-eve of the big anniversary, I wanted to post the text of a letter written to the BBC by an activist friend of ours, an appreciative response to the broadcast company's inclusion of an American ex-marine's criticism of our...

Barry and I will be in Europe for three weeks, and I will almost certainly not be continuing these posts, even if he manages to do his part for the public. Check him out. I'm sure I will feel the...

Last September, for the first time in at least 326 years, but certainly much longer, the dreamers stopped coming to New York. The City was physically isolated for about 24 hours, beginning the morning of the eleventh.No one arrived bearing...

While I was speaking during intermission to the two women who sat next to us tonight at the theater, one of them said that she really liked my button (the slash "WAR" button I've worn now for exactly 360 days)....

I was a Kiki and Herb virgin until tonight. I'm now a convert, and I welcome the mark and the burden that usually accompanies that designation. The show at The Knitting Factory was a knockout. I told my friends that...

Are there really people out there? Maybe there is still hope, but we're going to have to let each other know we're here. Don't hide under a basket!If you scratch the surface of the poll numbers about Bush and Ashcroft's...

Some of you may not have heard, but in the last few years it's become clear that she's made what appears to be a 180 degree turn from her left-baiting personna. We can use her eloquence. This morning Arianna Huffington...

Mark Morford begins his characteristically-restrained critique (just kidding!) of the appalling usurper of the office of U.S. vice-president, We have a war-crazed vice president. An addict, a verifiable military junkie. Many of us perhaps do not fully realize this. We...

We lost. We didn't know we were at war. We didn't even think there was an enemy. The weapons were all in the other side's hands, but since we were thoroughly brain-washed before hostilities began in earnest, we wouldn't have...

There is, unfortunately, almost no precedent for the kind of attack this former President today directed against the current White House occupants.Fundamental changes are taking place in the historical policies of the United States with regard to human rights, our...

We don't want to speak out and we don't want to listen in.Hlynur Hallsson arrived this summer in Marfa, Tex., with plans, as he put it, to stimulate discussion. [The first exhibit which the artist assembled at the very respectable...

We love Paul Rudnick! This week in The New Yorker he writes a helpful memo to the FBI which should assist them in an investigation of the putative Gay Mafia.RE: The F.B.I.'s racketeering division recently infiltrated the nation's alleged...

but AIDS activism threatens governments, including China now. The news item is now about a week old. A major Chinese AIDS activist, Dr. Wan Yanhai, "disappeared" sometime after August 24. Relatives and human rights groups believe he has been detained...

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a sort-of Reader's Digest thing on this weblog, condensing other sources' feelgood and feelbad items for easier accessibility. Well, Harper's goes one step further with it's "Weekly Review," where in a few short minutes...

Sorry. Yeah, it's sentimental I guess, but it's really ok, because they're tough, these guys, and at least one gal, who looks like she could handle anything--and probably has had to. It's a wonderful piece [with a slideshow]. Don't miss...

Yup. It appears on the "Styles and Fashion" page of the paper's site. It's the first for the NYTimes and it's a nice story, so here it is.The couple met in October 1992 in Washington, where Mr. Goldstein was working...

We joined our handsome blog-fellows at The Abbey last night, but we missed the women this time! The Driggs Street boite is way cool, but if we have a community as bloggers it's all about the fact that we talk...

[I'm excerpting sections from a contributing OP-ED piece by Zbigniew Brzezinski in yesterday's NYTimes. The complete text fleshes out the skeletal, but succinct, argument posted here.] Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that...

Maybe the biggest downer of this argument for giving Americans the down-time which Europeans, even the Japanese, enjoy in quantities denied us you here is the part about our greed for consumption being the engine of our own social destruction....

New York is prett much the nation's capital, if not the capital of the world, in many ways, but until 212 years ago it was in actual fact the political capital of the new nation. Now they're all coming back,...

It's not the barbeque, and it's certainly not the traffic. It was born as an attempt to appease the working people of America. [Remember the Pullman strike in history class?] Unfortunately it seems to have worked too well.The observance of...

Are we better off knowing that they don't know what they are doing, or does that make them more dangerous?Already under fire from abroad, the Bush administration was criticized across the political spectrum at home on Sunday for an Iraq...

The other, little-guy countries on the planet may still make a difference after all!Germany has told the United States it will withhold evidence against Sept. 11 conspiracy defendant Zacarias Moussaoui unless it receives assurances that the material won't be used...