Lloyd Bowers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1952, graduated from Furman University in 1976, and has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 2002.
The Results of Polar Bear Research is Lloyd's first novel and was published in 2007. Lloyd's next book, Keep These in the Family, is a collection of twelve stories and was published in 2010.
"I grew up in the South," says Lloyd. "The Southern Appalachians is a sort of fixed foot in my life, and the summer-time is a great time to gravitate unpredictably in social settings."
"Freedom is a Public Utility, published 2014, developed from the discovery of a stash of old family letters, dated 1812 to 1857, mailed to my great-great-grandfather John Siegling, who emigrated from Erfurt, Germany, and settled in Charleston in 1820. That he was en route, or 'unterwegs,' for five years impressed me.
"Divide the Country! was published February, 2020. It reflects my concern about the disunity, and even partisan hatred, that plagues the U.S."
In its obituary for actress Betsy Blair (real name Winifred Boger) a British newspaper wrote that Blair "stayed true to her left-wing ideals." But by her own admission, she self-effacingly described her allegiance as that of a "Gauche Caviar," literally a leftist who eats caviar. Blair said she wanted to join the Communist Party, but the Party said not to, that it gained credibility by her marriage to actor Gene Kelly, at that time one of the highest paid actors in the business.
Whittaker Chambers joined the Communist Party in 1925. His life as a communist started simply, first as a sales manager for the Party newspaper The Daily Worker, then as an occasional writer for the paper, then to more important positions. He survived the first major factional fight and purge at the Daily Worker in 1929, but resigned on his own terms shortly afterward and went to work for The New Masses, the Communist Party's art and literature magazine.
Badlands tells the story of a violent man with no conscience committing murders in South Dakota and Montana. So I can't really recommend Badlands, except to say that I liked it. I don't remember when I saw for the first time—perhaps years ago when my alma mater Furman University hosted a relevant film series and showed it then, or perhaps I saw it in conjunction with my literary-criticism course.
In the old days, the television journalist Mike Wallace ranked as the most important news reporter for CBS News. He had a singularly confrontational style of interviewing guests and made himself many enemies for extracting confessions. He held the evidence of malfeasance in front of his guests like a damn prosecutor. The higher-ups at CBS sometimes winced if he skewered important public figures, but they said nothing publicly about Wallace until after his death. His confrontational style did not appear again until Tim Russert started hosting Meet the Press.
This article appeared in a newspaper during my visit to Germany in July of this year. It refers to the increasing number of Germans who declare themselves non-believers, withdraw their membership from the church, and opt out of paying a church tax for the maintenance of religious buildings and schools. To exempt themselves from the church-tax, they receive a Kirchenaustrittsbescheinigung, a certificate from the government that declares them officially unchurched. If an official catches them attending church anyway, can the government invalidate the Kirchenaustrittsbescheinigung? Will you have to start paying the church-tax again? The article does not say.
This article "Kampf um Begriffe" (A Battle over Political Terms) appeared in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper on February 9th, during my last visit to Germany. It refers to the efforts of Right- and Left-wing political parties in Germany to tar each other with the "Nazi" or "Commie" brush. The Nazis during World War II slaughtered millions of people; likewise the Communists in the Soviet Union. Only a fool In Germany would advertise himself openly as one or the other. That such terms linger for so long in the media culture of Germany interests me, since the Germans use them mostly for their defamatory value.
This article appeared in the February 16th Sunday-edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper during my last trip to Germany. "PLAN-Wirtschaft in Kalifornien" describes the homeowner's insurance situation in California, which the spate of devastating fires has thrust into the limelight. The California Department of Insurance places limits on the amount that insurance carriers can charge homeowners to insure their homes, which means that most insurance carriers cannot make a profit. They had already left the state before the fires started. They would only lose money, if they tried to play by the Department's silly rules.
Like many Americans, I like to sample the opinions of average citizens from the comments they leave on social media, and feel dismay at the growing hostility and ideological gulf that separates the opposing sides. The Democrats take wealthy Republicans to task for their greed, hypocrisy, and racism. Republicans criticize the Democrats for their faith in discredited systems like Socialism and Egalitarianism. America does not need enemies. We are our own worst enemy! It makes me wonder why none of our leaders have suggested that we divide the country to create new countries, one for each side, that embody the different value systems.
Years ago, longer than I care to remember, I wanted to skip a semester at college and remain in the Boston area. I applied for different jobs, pestering old friends to put me up for extra nights while I continued to search for a job. I applied at the Boston Tea Party Museum and must have made an indifferent job-candidate, since the object of my remaining in Boston was a girl, not history, at all! The person interviewing me picked up on my indifference quickly and sent me away without a job. As I stood at the pier, I watched the Museum employees in period costumes show their guests how to throw a tea-chest into Boston Bay. It had a rope attached to it that the employees used to haul the chest from the Bay, for the next guest to throw.
This article "Deutsche Irrtümer" (Germany's mistakes) appeared in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on the 24th of February. The Frankfurter Allgemeine apparently allowed a guest-author to publish an editorial on the first page of its "Feuilleton" section, where German newspapers typically publicize cultural events and explore public curiosities. Ayata does not work for the newspaper. He is an ethnic Turk born in Germany who runs a travel agency in Berlin and writes fiction on the side. The German-language article on Wikipedia, however, does not mention a travel agency, only his writing.
The article "Jede Parole hat eine Folge" (Any political slogan can gain a following.) appeared in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on February 16th of this year, written by a pair of staff writers, Julia Schaaf and Anke Schipp. The authors report that high-school teachers in the former East Germany have a concern that their students simply parrot the opinions of the poorly-informed parents and their prejudiced media sources.
The Democrats hate the Republican/Trumpist perception of themselves as the status-quo party. Rather than simply opposing the Republican revolutionaries with a defense of the status quo, the Democrats need to publicize their own program of innovation. Otherwise, the only left-wing challenge to the status quo will come from Facebook bloggers, who have little sense of real innovation and reform, except to soak the rich and dish out payback.
