A WORD OF EXPLANATION

Since I started this blog almost ten years ago [!], I have for the most part written and posted extremely lengthy essays, some of which have run 20,000 words or more and have stretched over several weeks.   I find myself now, in this desperately dangerous and frightening time, inclining more to many quick posts, several a day.  These posts link to things I have read on the web, respond to questions, suggest possible political actions, and in general constitute a running commentary in the minute, as it were, rather than, as I like to say, sub specie aeternitatis.  

I will not eschew the lengthy and thoughtful essay when the spirit moves me.  But as I learned all those years ago in Basic Training, when you are under fire and communicating with the next platoon down the line, brevity is to be preferred to literary elegance.