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.

Sept. 30, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

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

Sept. 2, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

Aug. 19, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

Aug. 5, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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'

July 22, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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

July 8, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

June 10, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

May 27, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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

May 13, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

April 29, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

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

April 1, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.'

March 4, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

And We've Gotten Better Letters From High School Kids

Feb. 24, 2005 Postmarks

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

Feb. 18, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

Feb. 4, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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.

Jan. 21, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

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

Jan. 7, 2005 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Despite the change in inhabitants, the buildings, people, and mood of the old immigrant neighborhoods haven't changed. The streets still whisper the same cautionary advice: Survive and get out.

Dec. 24, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

'My love is an imperfect thing but it sings.' Those are the words to be carved on the tombstone of Michael Ventura's brother Aldo, an unstable soul who died last week.

Dec. 10, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

The numbers tell a different story than the pundits: The next election will again be the Democrats' to lose if party members don't learn to talk plainly and with respect to people who are different culturally, and are uneducated, left out, or left behind

Nov. 26, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Cry over the election if you must, but don't let the bastards sap your vitality. American progressives started seriously mass-scale organizing only about a year ago, and in just one year we came within reach of victory.

Nov. 12, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

The great days of the United States of America are over: Our country is now important economically only because of its citizens' consumption

Oct. 29, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

As we approach the most pivotal election since 1860, the work of Stirling Silliphant comes to mind because he shows that our present situation was not created by 9 / 11 but has been brewing for a long time

Oct. 15, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

In their behavior and beliefs, Ralph Nader and George W. Bush are twins separated at birth: Nader's candidacy is an act of perfidy

Oct. 1, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

All the economic numbers point one way: Hard times are about to get harder

Sept. 17, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

'The 9 / 11 Commission Report' only shows us how much we still do not know about what happened on that day

Sept. 3, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

The White House resorted to scare tactics, terror alerts, and slander following the Democratic Convention in order to avert the public's attention from newly released statistics documenting the country's economic downturn

Aug. 20, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Most of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq came from little places that the 21st century has left behind

Aug. 6, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Changes in Earth's atmosphere – solar flares, the shape of the planet, disruptions in the ozone layer and magnetic fields – are bigger than any of our more quotidian concerns

July 23, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

Letters at 3AM

Speaking through your children's blood, and the words of the past and the present

June 11, 2004 Column by Michael Ventura

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