William Lobb's Blog, page 14

We Need Men Like These Men

I was not a fan of Mohammed Ali, I was a follower, a believer. He was the greatest of all time. In a time of complete chaos and societal breakdown, and a time when the old bastions were falling and failing and revealing an ugly truth, Ali stood up and demanded a courageous honesty. His […]

The Fourth Step – A searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Samuel Clemons was as socially liberal and politically progressive as any man in the nineteenth century could be. He wrote in a voice and used words and names for black men and native men that were offensive at best, flat out wrong is a better word for it. I never met the man, but I […]

New York, 2020

I don’t like Andrew Cuomo, never have. I didn’t like his father either. I think Andrew Cuomo did an exemplary job when NY city and state were the epicenter of the early outbreaks of this pandemic. I love the naysayers have such criticism for his part in the nursing home debacle. I was talking to […]

Emmett Till

Every time it happens I think not a damn thing has changed since Watts, and Bobby Seale and Huey Newton—1966. Not a damn thing has changed since Marvin wrote Inner City Blues—1972. Every time the cities explode with rage I say to some other white guy, “What exactly do you expect?” Malcolm X said, ““Concerning […]

Train Smoke

The summer always ended on his porch, the neighbor, Harry McCabe, down the dirt path dead-end by the water. Feet up on the surrounding concrete and stone wall, his front porch. Leaning back in the kitchen chairs we’d drug out after eating the evening meal. Carefully surveying the woods for the skunks. They liked to […]

On the passing of Rush Limbaugh:

On the passing of Rush Limbaugh: I started using the Chobani caramel creamer in my coffee this winter, not a lot, but it really adds a nice taste. I’m always mindful of too many fats, etc., but I figure in the midst of this crummy Covid winter, why not. I finally gave up shoveling and […]

Oh, Canada…

Canada, this week, decided the Proud Boys are a terrorist group, just like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It’s not going to happen here, not with men like Chuck Schumer’s and John Kerry’s steady hand on the tiller. We’ve become weak and cowardly nation because we allow weak and cowardly people to lead us. I […]

Happy Christmas, Ma

I sit three feet from the box of wax candles in shapes of snowmen and Santa Claus and pine trees, and I remember the challenges you had with pudding and names and words last Christmas. I left up the gaudy, fake, three-foot plastic tree in your room, the lights still on, until you died in […]

But I have questions…

I realize that some, many, view the founders as damn nearly man-gods, who suffered otherworldly brilliance and vision. We were taught in elementary school to overlook things like genocide of the native population and the fact that many of these man-gods owned, and on the regular threw a fuck or two into the human beings […]

November 1963

It feels a lot, tonight, like November 1963, and I have liver and onions and mashed potatoes sitting on my plate. I wasn’t eating any of that, and my father wasn’t letting me up from the table until I did, and the liver was stone cold. I learned the meaning of the word ‘stand-off’ in […]