Wilderness House Literary Review

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Welcome to the 74th issue (Volume 19, no 2) of the Wilderness House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards.

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Table of Contents

Opine
Search
Art
Fiction

Essays
Poetry
Review
Cumulative Index

Opine

Cantankerous Old Men

Sixty-some years ago two grumpy old men (or so they seemed at the time) debated American politics on a tiny grainy black and white TV in living rooms around the U.S. No one in the room wanted either one. It was to be the end of America as we knew it. One was a brash “young” Roman Catholic Irishman, a Democrat, and the other had been a dower Vice President and lawyer for the notorious Joseph McCarthy commie-under-every-bed witch hunt, a Republican. By reputation, the Republicans were staunch anti-Communist who boasted how they had stopped the Russians on the doorstep of Western Europe. Of course, it was the Democrats that prosecuted the Korean War and later the war in Vietnam in a vane attempt to stop the tide of creeping Sovietism, both the Russian and Chinese kind.

With an “I Like Ike” bumper sticker on their car, they drove to the polling place to cast their ballot for the brash young Democrat, a war hero. He would lead a new generation of Americans, born in the 20th century. He would put a man on the moon and the other things. It was Camelot, but only in retrospect.

By 1960 the world had largely recovered from a World War. The American Economy was booming but there were dark clouds on the horizon. The Republican President and former General Eisenhower, Ike, had “let” the Russians take over Eastern Europe without a fight. The Communists were on a roll and while the Republicans made all the right noises (see Barry Goldwater) it was left to the new Democratic administration of JFK to deal with.

At the U.N. Russian president Khrushchev maliciously said “We will bury you.” For over a year we practiced “duck and cover” as the Cuban Missile Crisis ground on. We kept three months worth of food and water in our basement should the unthinkable happen. It didn’t and the Democrats went on to be blamed for Vietnam which turned into a disaster.

Enter the 2024 TV debate. Two cantankerous old men fill the stage. One is a convicted felon, a man incapable of telling the truth even if he knew what it was, while the other spent 90 minutes looking like a deer mesmerized by an oncoming headlight. In the background, there is the simmering World War where the current Russian president has invaded a sovereign country whose existence was guaranteed by the United States in exchange for giving up their atomic bombs. Then there is the Iranian attempt to ignite a war in the Middle East and the slow acquisition of their own nuclear weapons, and there is always China, waiting to see the results on Ukraine before attempting to take Formosa. Russia threatens, again, to use nuclear weapons, Iran threatens to acquire them, and North Korea threatens South Korea with them while the mesmerized old man tries to keep a wet blanket on a world on the edge of catastrophe.

In some respects, nothing ever changes. Did the Roman Senate know they met for the last time in 476 AD or was it 603 AD? We can only wish the next few generations better results.

Search the house

Art

Essay

There is, sometimes, a fine line between fiction and non-fiction. We have several essays that muddy that line, again. I've been assured by the authors that their stories rightly belong here and not in our fiction section. You can be the judge of that.