AltWeeklies Wire
Talking Unionnew
There’s a curious thing about talking union. It’s not cool. Unions ain’t cool. They’re so not cool you’ll notice almost nobody writes about them. They ain’t trendy. But they’re the coming thing.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
05-27-2014 |
Commentary
Tags: Labor unions
A Scary Apparition From the Desertnew
The other night on MSNBC, Rachael Maddow talked about Col. William P. Gale, the man who created the Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity and Aryan Nation movements.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
05-06-2014 |
Commentary
Getting Older, Not Always Gracefullynew
Getting older was supposed to be easier than this--more like a wonderful long vacation. But of course, it hasn't been that way. My wife left me just before I turned 70 and I’m still not getting along with it too well a couple of years later. I don’t have enough on Social Security to survive, so I'm still working part time at my old high-stress journalism job. And becoming something of a lonely and grumpy old man in the process.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
03-24-2014 |
Commentary
The Future Governor From Newhall, Calif.new
The obituary notice of a four-term California assemblyman who died at 86 the other day brought back memories of an odd and jarring time in my youth when he hired me to write a philosophy because he was then an aspiring politician.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
03-06-2014 |
Commentary
Tags: Jim Keysor
Talking Unionnew
There's a curious thing about talking union. It's not cool. Unions ain't cool. They're so not cool you'll notice almost nobody writes about them. They ain't trendy. But they're the coming thing.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
02-19-2014 |
Commentary
Penelope Sudrownew
Lionel Rolfe meets actress Penelope Sudrow.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
12-27-2013 |
Commentary
Obama Will Go Down In History As One of Our Greatest Presidentsnew
In my mind, there's little doubt that Barack Obama will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. He is presiding over a country almost as torn by divisions as it was in the civil war. Our greatest presidents come out of troubled times.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
09-30-2013 |
Commentary
A Celebration of George Duke, a Great Musicion and a Good Guynew
The death of keyboardist George Duke at 67 last week brought back memories of the ‘70s when I smoked dope with him nearly every day.
Random Lengths News |
lionel Rolfe |
08-12-2013 |
Music
A Deeply Melancholic Statenew
A couple of days ago I was in a deeply melancholic state because of various personal struggles, including health and financial issues and an ex-wife I still love, but it all is leavened with the sense that as one approaches the end of life, the world becomes a much more apocalyptical place.
Sitting here in Los Angeles, I gazed at recent photographs of Nelson Mandela in South Africa wearing a kind of a beatific smile. It left me wondering if he really felt that sanguine about the planet he is leaving soon. I pondered these matters in part because it evoked some powerful links in my own life.
Mandela, as we all know, was a compatriot of another great Apartheid leader--Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who I saw in 1999 at Westminster Abbey in London at a memorial for the violinist Yehudi Menuhin--who also is my uncle.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
08-12-2013 |
Commentary
An Elusive Utopia By The Seanew
The traditional happening places for the arts in Los Angeles are two–and it’s been this way since the ’20s and earlier. One is Echo Park near downtown and the other is Venice by the sea. But Venice has captured more of the romance, perhaps because its history has been rich and porous enough there’s this terrible tendency to want to sum it all up, to say what exactly it means.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
08-01-2013 |
Nonfiction
Tom Paine, American Radicalnew
Alaine Lowell lived through the revolutionary ’60s — a young woman born of the counterculture and intent on experiencing the time-honored odyssey of finding one’s self.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
07-09-2013 |
History
Lionel's Lamentnew
Lionel asks, "Why is the world so full of pain? Why does the world seem to be going mad with excess pain? Bombs are exploding in our major cities, people are dying in incredible pain."
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
04-22-2013 |
Commentary
Pat Derby, Savior of Elephants, Diesnew
Pat Derby founded Ark2000, a 2000-acre refuge for elephants in the Mother Lode where at least one of the alleged pachyderm victims of the Los Angeles Zoo lived out her last days in happier refuge.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
02-25-2013 |
Animal Issues
Phyl Van Ammers on the The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohnnew
Phyl Van Ammers recently talked to Lionel Rolfe, the author whose most recent book is, “The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn: A Mostly True Memoir of California Journalism.” It is available on Amazon, both in paper and on Kindle. He will be doing a signing at Skylight Bookstore at 1818 N. Vermont Ave. in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles March 30 at 5 p.m.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
01-25-2013 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Sonji Kimmons: A Great & Special Concertnew
Sonji Kimmons came–one of the greatest of the unheralded blues pianists and singers around town–looked out over her audience at MJs, the bar in Silver Lake next door to the Trader Joe’s last Saturday, and played her heart out.
Random Lengths News |
Lionel Rolfe |
01-25-2013 |
Music
