W.D. Ehrhart

by W.D. Ehrhart I have just returned from the most relaxing, refreshing, rejuvenating, restorative, happy, stress-free four days I’ve experienced in many years. Decades even. Maybe in my entire life. There are not enough superlatives to describe it. My wife and I had driven up to the Adirondacks to visit old college friends of mine. They live on top of a hill in the midst of 134 acres of forested land surrounded by mountains. You can’t see it from their porch, but there’s a beaver pond down below them in the valley. You can see the hummingbirds that come to their feeders. And the blue …

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by W.D. Ehrhart Over the course of the previous two weeks, I have been working on an essay I had titled “There Is Still Time—But Not Much,” in which I argued that President Joe Biden should step aside and withdraw from this November’s election if the Democrats want even the slightest chance of defeating former President Donald Trump. Given that Biden officially withdrew his candidacy this past Sunday, and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the top spot on the ticket, there seems little point in reiterating my arguments in any detail. Suffice it to say that Biden is a decent enough person with …

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by W.D. Ehrhart Only recently did I learn that H. Bruce Franklin, the prolific scholar, cultural historian, and passionate teacher, had died back in mid-May. Aside from a June 7th obituary in the New York Times, and brief mentions on a couple of left-progressive websites, Franklin’s death went almost unnoticed by both mainstream and progressive media. The whole world paid homage when Daniel Ellsberg died eleven months earlier because Ellsberg—by stealing and revealing the infamous Pentagon Papers—had become famous: front-page top-of-the-fold headline news for months and even years. But in his own way, Bruce Franklin was equally committed to truth-telling and exposing the lies and …

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by W.D. Ehrhart Technology and I have a long and unhappy history dating back to the fall of 1970 when I took a course during my sophomore year at Swarthmore College called Engineering for Non-Majors, but popularly known as “Engine Whiz.” In those days, the computer took up the entire basement of the engineering building. You would sit in the classroom, and Professor Doby would write on the blackboard exactly the instructions you were supposed to type in. And then you would go down to the computer room and type it onto the computer punchcards. And I would do exactly as I was instructed. But …

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by W.D. Ehrhart Are you kidding me? Are you freakin’ kidding me?!?! I recently read this headline in today’s Washington Post: “Trump violated gag a 10th time, judge says, threatening jail.” The article goes on to say that “New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan made it clear to Trump that his 10th gag order violation—which he ruled on at the start of last Monday’s court session—was going to be the last that would result in only a fine.” Trump’s latest fine for contempt of court was $9000. Oh, ouch, agony, the pain, the pain! Let’s see: Dolt .45 would need to sell 23 pairs …

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by W.D. Ehrhart My memoir Vietnam-Perkasie ends in the spring of 1968 with me drunk and passed out in the shower at Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina.  It is a fitting way to end the book because that was my mental state by the time I got back from the war.  And I stayed pretty well messed up for a long, long time thereafter. And for a long time, I felt completely alienated from the community I grew up in or the people I grew up with.  The perception was not entirely false, either.  The good folks of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, had proudly …

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