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michael ventura 2005 26 results

Letters at 3AM

The Devil gives you five seconds, and God gives you none at all

Column, Dec. 23, 2005

Letters at 3AM

On the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, Micahel Ventura revisits the column he wrote at the time of Lennon's murder when the pain was fresh

Column, Dec. 9, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Stanley Crawford's 1966 novel 'GASCOYNE' has been out of print for 35 years, a literary crime redressed this month by the Overlook Press

Column, Nov. 25, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Right now, and for at least the next three years of this administration, the United States of America is not being governed. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, and Iraq every day confirms, that the powers-that-be are dysfunctional. We are on our own.

Column, Nov. 11, 2005

Letters at 3AM

With oil in the future rationed to agriculture, essential services, and (inevitably) the military, and personal long-distance driving and passenger flight no longer feasible – then, if the United States is to remain a continental entity, the only answer is trains

Column, Oct. 28, 2005

Letters at 3AM

People of all political persuasions are beginning to face the reality that Americans' demand for oil is outpacing our supply and refining capacity, which in turn will cripple our economy's ability to grow. Our disposable society will become a scavenging society, and, on the brighter side, a more inventive society.

Column, Oct. 14, 2005

Letters at 3AM

With two storms, nature has increased the speed of America's decline by several years. This series of columns sketches what we're in for (for good as well as for ill). The focus of this column is air travel and the tourist industries.

Column, Sep. 30, 2005

Letters at 3AM

To blame disasters like the Twin Towers and New Orleans on a few perpetrators is to ignore the greater disasters that are the foundation upon which the developed world lives: our attempts to hold on to an unsustainable way of life

Column, Sep. 16, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Are the Panhandle's many roadside monuments to Christ testaments of faith or unadmitted doubt, or some of both?

Column, Sep. 2, 2005

Letters at 3AM

The sapping of America's economic and technological dominance is a boon for the world. Many are gaining from the decline of a few.

Column, Aug. 19, 2005

Letters at 3AM

We are a community, we and the creatures. There are only a few tenths of a percent of difference between the chimpanzees' DNA and ours, yours, mine.

Column, Aug. 5, 2005

Letters at 3AM

No recent commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' shared the poem's spirit or its author's invitation to expand the very definition of 'human being'

Column, Jul. 22, 2005

Letters at 3AM

'Practice,' in the modern sense, means to work at something persistently, trying to get it right – which also fits my meaning, my practice: the hour or so a day when I read my 'devotionals' (a Catholic usage), then to go to my altar to meditate and pray

Column, Jul. 8, 2005

Letters at 3AM

A visit to Deadwood: The legends show you where to go. Once you get there, you do your best to find out why you came.

Column, Jun. 24, 2005

Letters at 3AM

We take cars for granted, yet people have been living like this only a short time, and, when this era exhausts itself, people may never live like this again. What will they think of us, I wonder.

Column, Jun. 10, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Happiness costs. I know better now than to indulge this happiness, but still I drive on and I can't or won't stop. It isn't right that I and my Chevy, and you and your car, eat up the world's resources at the rate we do. We're driving in sin.

Column, May. 27, 2005

Letters at 3AM

As the semester begins, I present my high school seniors with the words of our great American authors and hope they provide a road map or the bread crumbs that can lead them through the journey of their lives

Column, May. 13, 2005

Letters at 3AM

No country gets two centuries anymore. The 21st will be China's century. That's what $4-plus a gallon means, and nothing can stop it. We're heading for a modern Dust Bowl.

Column, Apr. 29, 2005

Letters at 3AM

The Oklahoma City Memorial and Ground Zero stir feelings of the dead calling on us to live

Column, Apr. 15, 2005

Letters at 3AM

The following examples of government mismanagement ought to be April Fools' jokes, but they're not

Column, Apr. 1, 2005

Letter at 3AM

Donating money to causes is fine and necessary, but it doesn't get you off the hook; active human energy is what generates change. Bite off a chunk of trouble for yourself. There is no hope or solution without you.

Column, Mar. 18, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Our Ecstatic Days' is that rarest of creatures: a great novel. The first great American novel of the 21st century. Steve Erickson has discovered the secret of creating a novel that is not a book but an organism. Proust did it. Joyce almost did it. Faulkner sometimes did it. Marquez did it. Yes, that's the company Steve's keeping in Our Ecstatic Days.'

Column, Mar. 4, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Statistics on American education tell a dreadful story, the story of an advanced technological society slipping back to a state of ignorance and superstition

Column, Feb. 18, 2005

Letters at 3AM

Carnaval literally means 'Goodbye, meat,' but in spirit it's more like 'Farewell to desires of the flesh.' Let's celebrate our desires before we bid them farewell.

Column, Feb. 4, 2005

Letters at 3AM

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the U.S.A. is No. 1,' the greatest.' A number of facts reveal that we can no longer even consider ourselves among the Top 10 nations in the world.

Column, Jan. 21, 2005

Letters at 3AM

This month celebrates the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' 'Don Quixote,' the first great novel of Western literature and the most prophetic, in which deconstruction, postmodernism, and literary theory wind up bumping into one another and falling down hard

Column, Jan. 7, 2005