November 16 marked the beginning of National Geography Awareness Week. Whether “national” indicates an emphasis on native geographical awareness, or is meant to suggest that we as a nation need to brush up on world geography, is unclear. Without getting too theoretical, I’d like to point out that geography is a social construct. Unlike […]

[Read more →]

The computer is a useful tool.  We all use it regularly.  The fact that I post here should make it clear to the impartial that I have no beef with these gizmos.
But this is a puritanical culture; and many of our fellow citizens view the non-digital with the same dogmatic intolerance with which the Pilgrims eyed […]

[Read more →]

An article in this Sunday’s New York Times celebrates an organization  dedicated to the historical documentation of local ullage (in this case, “local” meaning the 1/3 of the nation comprising the West).
ByJESSE McKINLEY
TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of the W.P.A. […]

[Read more →]

Yes, it’s an election year; and no, I won’t add to the glut of punditry.  It’s not that I have nothing to say on the subject – I too can yakety yak till twilight falls — but this site is devoted to the other part, and that’s what I’ll stick to.
I would like to mention, however, […]

[Read more →]

There is a wonderful variety of short literary forms: limericks, quatrains, haiku, couplets, epigrams, anecdotes, jokes, riddles, parables, fables, proverbs, maxims, blackouts, slogans, and on and on. Some are simply passing thoughts; others pack as much meaning as possible into the smallest space.
Here, we’ll trot out the one-word poem — to be specific, the one-word […]

[Read more →]

We here at the Ullage Group are intrigued by the extremes of literature. For that reason, we’ll occasionally raise a toast to an exceptional example. In this series, those will be works that are unusually short or long.
The long poem is an unpopular form these days. Long movies and TV serials do […]

[Read more →]

Several years ago, an unusual character was leaving packets of his outpourings around Manhattan. He was apparently never discovered by the Outsider Art establishment; so I did a slide show about him, which I showed in a number of places around New York. It was also picked up by a website called “Word,” […]

[Read more →]