Author: Steven Clark

4,304 words

“A splendid little war” was how Secretary of State John Hay described the Spanish-American War of 1898. Since Hay had served in Abraham Lincoln’s administration, he had had a lot of experience with more jaundiced wars like the one in the 1860s. The Spanish-American War was little, and its splendor depended upon where you were when it occurred. In DC’s clubrooms and in Congress, it was quite alluring, and was to most of the country. But if you were on the front line taking rounds from Spanish Mausers or suffering agony from malaria or dysentery — which a good part of the army was — it was not so splendid. (more…)

4,603 words

The Vice President of the United States: It’s a lousy job, but someone’s got to do it. So why not cut to the chase and get a lousy person?

This was the premise of the comedy series Veep, which ran from 2012-2019 on HBO, chronicling the rise and fall and semi-rise of Selena Meyer, who schemes, rules, dominates, cowers, and obfuscates her way to power. Selena, aided (and generally hindered) by her staff, carries the water for President Hughes, and is almost totally ignored except when he orders her out to show the flag, take the heat, or be his pit bull, although Selena winds up as a Chihuahua more often than not, especially when a last-minute bit of political expediency by the unseen President leaves Selene as the fall guy . . . or gal, less a pit bull than sacrificial lamb. (more…)

2,454 words

Unlike many moviegoers, I was never that enthusiastic about Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s response to the arms race. I remember that back in the 1980s, a girlfriend and I saw the film and she thought it made light of a serious issue. This was at the height of President Reagan’s sending more missiles to Europe, his Star Wars missile defense plan, and everyone’s lugubrious viewing of The Day After. (more…)

2,101 words

Mildred Walker (1905-1998) wrote a series of books considered Western regional, and was compared to Willa Cather. Walker, however, has a sensibility all her own, and Winter Wheat (1944) was a book that impressed me from the first page. In it, people are tied to the land and the wheat it produces.

It begins in an office by the storage silo in Gotham, a village of 75 that hardly lives up to its pretentious name. (more…)

3,918 words

Peaches.

The orchard’s ripeness floated through the screen window like a first kiss. They begged to be picked. Gathered. Eaten. Rob fought hard for his orchard, for all his crops. From bugs. Birds. Deer. Rot. (more…)

2,431 words 

Panic in the Streets (1950) is directed by Elia Kazan, and on the surface is a gangster film and often advertised as one. But it’s more of a study of society dealing with an outside threat from a contagious disease.

Set in a wintery New Orleans, a card game in a dive breaks up when one of the players, an illegal immigrant, gets sick and has to leave. (more…)

3,916 words

NOTE: All names in this memoir are fictional.

Last year I went to a Christmas party in St. Louis, given by a communications group: a catch-all for filmmakers, directors, actors, screenwriters, and the usual wannabes. Having written an award-winning screenplay some years ago, I’m more be than wanna, but the candle of my fifteen minutes of local fame has long since burned out. (more…)

2,278 words

The vision of fifties America as a sunny, prosperous world full of stable values and families has no truck with Billy Wilder. Having spent some time in the Weimar Berlin of his youth as a paid dancer for women, he got used to being used and rented out, if anyone can ever get used to it. He packed his cynicism with him when he came to America and easily fit into Hollywood. To Wilder, everyone has a price, and their most noble values and visions are up for grabs. (more…)

3,305 words

John Podhoretz
Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White House Follies, 1989-1993
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993

Hell of a Ride is a witty, funny, insider view of a White House whose chief occupant was confused about “the vision thing.” Whose speeches and actions were contradictory and tepid. A Yale graduate who far too many times sounded inarticulate, once saying, in a moment predating Bidenesque boo-boos, “Message: I care” — speaking not from the heart, but from his teleprompter. (more…)

8,120 words

The sky was gray and scuffed, like someone had wiped their feet on it.

It had stayed that way since the dogs came and took Rinty. Mom always said she could do her chores without watching me because Rinty never left my side. (more…)

1,217 words

On Christmas of 1996 I was at a crossroads. I had spent seven years in Boston — a life’s goal, and they were seven of the happiest years of my life — but in 1991 I moved to Columbia, Missouri, to live with Mother. I had worked and saved money, ostensibly planning to go to library school at the university, then return to Boston, ready to get hired. But things didn’t turn out that way. (more…)

4,073 words

Bread and Chocolate, a 1974 Italian film written and directed by Franco Brusati and starring Nino Manfredi, came when immigration was heating up in America. It reminded me of my own experience of the 1970s, when I was stationed in Germany and seeing foreign “guest workers” doing scut work everywhere, from restaurant help to loading trucks. In front of my barracks every morning, a doleful squad of Turks hopped off a truck to collect good, clean, municipal German trash while a burly German in a truck waited for them to do the drag and hassle before driving on. (more…)