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."
After I finished college in 1975, I returned to my home in Columbus, Georgia, and started working for my father at his livestock feedmill. The first six months or so was pure hell for a guy who had studied literature in college, knew next to nothing about running a business, and I was spindly and out of shape from doing schoolwork continuously for four years. I walked a fairly steep learning curve for so long, I really don't remember when I finally settled into a routine.
I saw this article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper back in March of this year. The title of it reads "Rejoicing Over the End of the World". The article begins "We live in an apocalyptic age". Many people consider themselves the "Last Generation". Humanity once had a vision of itself as "sapiens"—the best of the Homo genus. Now, we might consider changing it to "Homo destruens", in view of our appetite for destruction through global-warming and nuclear weapons,
The murder of actress Sharon Tate and four other people took place over the night of August 8-9th, 1969. Witnesses in the same neighborhood said they heard gunshots and screams through the night. I was seventeen at the time, concerned with meeting girls and going off to college, so that the deaths hardly registered with me. My World remained pretty small until I went off to college. I just didn't pay much attention to current events at that time.
According to the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, no one knows for certain who first uttered this truism. The circus-owner P. T. Barnum may have originated it, since he exhibited fraudulent freaks as part of his circus acts. Besides him, Wikipedia names Michael Cassius McDonald, the nineteenth-century gambling-parlor-boss of Chicago, as the first person to actually say it—or just any swindler looking to get rich quick by bilking poor fools out of their money.
Historically, a "stalking-horse" refers to a hunter who hides behind a dummy horse to allow him to get close to his prey, without the prey seeing him. Movie and TV executives employ a similar ruse, which involves concealing a horrifying movie-plot behind an attractive young actress, that a female audience can identify with and trust, and sit through slasher movies that don't generally appeal to them. The stalking-horse actresses permit the cruder aspects of the movie-culture to pass through a woman's protective cultural cocoon and imbue her personal space with fear.
It goes without saying that Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. You have to ask, "Why can't the man quit insulting people, stop looking so ornery, or at least adopt a better way of speaking? Is he really that uncouth?" He has shown his crudeness and arrogance time and again. What is there to like in such a man?
I saw Thunderball for the first time when it came out in 1965 and watched it several additional times, for as long as the cinema hosted it. The late Sean Connery made quite a career for himself and played many roles after James Bond. None of them moved me like Thunderball. Other actors took up the role of Bond—after Connery moved on to other projects—and continued the success of that franchise; but none of the other actors carried it off like Connery—the commanding voice, the malevolent twinkle in his eye, and exotic facial features.
Governing a country is like steering a ship. It requires a constitution and a man who knows how to use it to ply the political and diplomatic waters and promote the interests of the nation..
I can't think of a more bourgeois movie than Eric Rohmer's Boyfriends and Girlfriends—in French L'Ami de mon amie. ("The Friend of my Boyfriend") It tells the story of two young men and three young women—educated, mid-level bureaucrats—who search for love in a chic but ultra-modern suburb near Paris, France.
Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States for nine months in 1831. He returned to France at the beginning of 1832 and set about writing up his impressions of the tour. He published his book Democracy in America in two volumes, the first in 1835, the second in 1840. I remember reading it, at the advice of a high-school friend years ago. I found the 700-page book hard-going and don't remember when I gave it up. It made a huge impression on me, at any rate, and I knew I would have to return to it, just to complete my education, so to speak.
Last week, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper published an article titled "Überall Brandmauern". In English, it means "There are firewalls everywhere." By "firewall", the authors refer to the ideological firewall that every political party maintains, that differentiates it from every other party.
When left-wing bloggers post their diatribes on Facebook, they never say that they can offer an alternative political or eocnomic system. They only condemn Capitalism in the usual language of the Left, and demand that the government tax the wealthy: Take from the rich and give to the poor, sort of thing. Capitalism encourages bad things in our nation—racism, sexism, police brutality, and exploitation of the poor.
