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Tabula Rasa

Writer’s craft, education, politics

Taking The Worm

Jimmy Carter For President

There’s a bony finger pointed at me, and another, and another. Old spirits, dead but never gone, our living history, the crust we call our past — Dallas, Selma, Chicago, the other meat on the rack — their voices all stink and ridicule, over the chains and the fire: DON’T TRUST THEM, NOT AGAIN.

Drawings By L.S. Gilliam

Most Chapel Hill acquaintances have known only my student work (’64-’68) and the past year’s oil paintings of the University campus. I hope these drawings demonstrate a wider range of interests than that indicated by a limited knowledge of my work.

Another Appetite

It is often difficult, usually frustrating and seldom appreciated, but those of us who continue to live our lives faithful to our beliefs and ideals are truly patriots and lovers of freedom.

American Pie

So it is that every fourth year we are treated to a seemingly new series of causes and slogans that are destined to end up being a further boost to special interests and privileged classes to which none of us belong.

Common Sense: 1976

A Manifesto Addressed To The Inhabitants Of America On The Following Interesting Subjects: Restraint, Bankruptcy, Selection, Dialectic

The approach and arrival of the Bicentennial year has evoked considerable analyses of North American political retrospective. While most diagnoses conclude an ailing bi-centenarian suffering from blunted thrust to blemished future, few prescribe remedies for this ailing body politic.

The Bicentennial Beast

The Bicentennial is not deceptive. It is quite simple. Two hundred years of freedom from Great Britain. Like an anniversary, it is a notation of time.

Untitled

Long Ride Into The Sunset

So it is that my attention is drawn to Ronald Reagan and George Wallace as they go through their spirited bicentennial hustles in an effort to become top banana.

Small Is Beautiful

Many writers, dazzled by the growth in size and power of national governments and corporate enterprises, make the mistake of calling for a single, global organ to coordinate human affairs. Their idea is to free industry from national shackles and supercharge the market by way of central organization.