by Jeff Maisey | Mar 16, 2025 | News, News & Views, Robotham
By Tom Robotham Our total attitude towards art, was, like, get up and do something — quit sitting there whining. – David Johansen, on the spirt of The New York Dolls In 1982, when I was working as a reporter and music columnist for The Staten Island Advance, I got...
by Jeff Maisey | Feb 20, 2025 | News, News & Views, Robotham
By Tom Robotham For the last decade or so, I’ve been in the habit of turning on CNN first thing in the morning, and letting it run for hours until it was time head to campus for afternoon classes. Often, it was background chatter while I prepared lectures, graded...
by Jeff Maisey | Jan 21, 2025 | Beer Reviews, Festivals, Horton, News, Robotham, Wine & Spirits
By Tom Robotham Last spring, I wrote an essay called “Leaving the Treehouse”—a reflection on my realization that it was time to vacate the apartment I had occupied for 17 years. I called it the Treehouse because it was on the fourth floor of an old building in West...
by Jeff Maisey | Dec 18, 2024 | News, News & Views, Robotham
By Tom Robotham In the wake of the election, as I noted here last month, I felt a profound sense of despair—and it lingers still. But in recent weeks, it’s been counterbalanced by meditations on hope—how it “perches in the soul,” as Emily Dickinson put it, “and sings...
by Jeff Maisey | Nov 19, 2024 | News, News & Views, Robotham
By Tom Robotham When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, I disagreed with many friends who thought there was no way he could win. The book I mentioned in my last essay—Amusing Ourselves to Death—kept coming to mind, and Trump personified author Neil Postman’s dark...
by Jeff Maisey | Oct 22, 2024 | News, News & Views, Robotham
By Tom Robotham Kamala Harris has been subjected to a lot attacks since she became the Democratic nominee for president: She’s a communist; she’s not really Black; she’s morally suspect because she never gave birth; she laughs too much. They’re all so idiotic that...
