About Me

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Los Angeles, CA, United States
I am a writer, photographer and musician living in Los Angeles. In the last few years, new written work--numerous plays, screenplays, and two novels--have demonstrated this to be the most productive period of my life. The journal I have also kept for thirty-five years has, of late, become a personal sounding board for my thoughts on peace and the state of the world...about which I remain hopelessly optimistic! My writing here will be in tandem to video "Peace Talks" I have recorded, and which will be released throughout 2011. You're welcome to visit my website, the "Studio 5" link, to see my photographs. As a classically-trained pianist, I have been composing music all my life. Two guitar re-mixes of piano music are attached here, as well as several music videos, including "Consider Peace" the title track of an up-coming CD. Balancing writing, photography and music has been a long and challenging path...not to be recommended! Yet this very Aries diversity reflects an enthusiasm for the modern world of which I feel very much a part.

Sunday, March 11, 2012


Time To Go...really!
The most recent massacre in Afghanistan--sixteen dead, including women and children shot by an apparently deranged American soldier--speaks to the damage that war and occupation causes on both sides.  Trouble is determining what the sides are, and whose side are we on?
The greater point is why we are in Afghanistan in the first place.  There can only be one answer:  that country’s rich mineral and oil deposits.  
With the aim of securing our hold on these resources, we have not only dehumanized the the Afghan people, our policies are obviously having the effect of dehumanizing our very own sons and daughters...not all of them, to be sure, but too many are coming home damaged goods, and I don't see anything to show for it.  

Many of our soldiers are serving in Afghanistan because they believe we’re there for noble reasons.  Are we?  Of course we’re quick to wrap a flag around the supposed good of our “mission”.  But the truth is, they're not fighting “for us” or our freedom.  They are there to support corporate policies which, it seems, is our military's main reason to exist.  President Obama seems powerless to override the will of the Pentagon--the "military/industrial complex" as President Eisenhower called it--and I challenge a Republican president to thwart it either...if they would even want to! 
The only blessing, if you can call it that, we can hope will come from this latest tragedy in Afghanistan is the questions we should continue to ask of our elected leaders:
What is the definition of “winning”?  

Do ANY of our military ventures serve other than corporate interests? 
Who is really running the show?   
Have we “lost Afghanistan” simply because we cannot secure the deals our companies want...and want so badly that “collateral damage” is just the price of doing business no matter which side it's on?  
Our soldiers are our flag.  What do either of them represent...really?  Just who are we invading for?