Category Archives: Uncategorized

I Should Be Writing My Armenia Book

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Joel D. Hirst

Originally posted on Joel D. Hirst's Blog:
This essay represents a failure, not complete for I remain optimistic but certainly a success deferred. I should be writing my Armenia novel. Each passing day, it gets a little harder. My…

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Fear

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Originally posted on Joel D. Hirst's Blog:
Nothing easier than to say ‘have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head,…

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RIP My Best Friend

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

My wife always tells me I have no friends. But that is not exactly true. I had one. Yes, somebody who stuck by me in the best and worst and all of that. But it was more. As I’m digesting … Continue reading →

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On Prophets and MISRULE

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

I have been feeling these days more often like my namesake, that grand Hebrew prophet of old seated atop a mountain decrying the wickedness around and imploring people to seek God. They never do, seek God. Wickedness is way too … Continue reading →

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War in Europe

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

Yesterday I watched “Sound of Music” with my little boy. We are going systematically through the classics of American civilization, books and movies and ideas that made us who we are and more importantly keep us who we are. Some … Continue reading →

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Our Ending Age

Posted on January 30, 2022 by Joel D. Hirst

There are ruins strewn across the length and breadth of this world. Tiwanaku, sitting high and sterile in the fastness of the Bolivian Altiplano protected by its Andean ring of mountains and the highland oxygenless lake filled during the last … Continue reading →

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Midnight at the Pera Palace

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Joel D. Hirst

“Everybody is writing their Turkey books,” said Rose Macaulay in “Towers of Trebizond“. The Black Sea region of the world is the oldest. Jason and his Argonauts – the chaining of Prometheus. The confluence of empires: Russian and Ottoman and … Continue reading →

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To Talk of Many Things… (Vol. #10 – China)

Posted on November 28, 2021 by Joel D. Hirst

But wait a bit,’ the Oysters cried,      Before we have our chat;For some of us are out of breath,      And all of us are fat! Today we obsess about China. Much like for the last twenty years, it was ISIS bombers in … Continue reading →

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The 100

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Joel D. Hirst

I rarely write reviews of television. If the makers don’t put much thought into creating it, why should I try to find meaning where there is none? I will invariably become disappointed. More so for Netflix – Obama’s pet Gramscian … Continue reading →

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Third-World-Ization

Posted on June 10, 2021 by Joel D. Hirst

I’ve been writing about the arriving ordeal for a while now; an ordeal which arrived and which announced itself via a pandemic that was first created and then mismanaged by the center – though the peripheries (as usual) will pay … Continue reading →

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