Tim Barrus Blog
Posts tagged with tim-barrus-on-tumblr
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CHER
Take notes. I was standing on a street corner in San Francisco. I was hardly expecting to see Cher standing beside me. She wasn’t alone. This was rock and roll. A whole army of folks from her tour were right behind her. Cher was concerned that not all of them…
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Tim Barrus New York Times
Take Notes. Leftists? The term is a lie that journalists use in their hypothesis of the definitional political boundaries. Those leftists. But. Who are these so-called leftists. I know this: You made it up. God help us. Who are these people. Who shakes the hand of a Marxist and says:…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
Take notes. What I see is a media that is conveniently ignoring one big thing. The American people did this. They want this. They are this. The talking heads were wrong. Optimism is another lie. Hope is not available. It never has been. The Lower Middle Class gets its name…
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Your Mouth
the last time I touched your soft lips with my fingers/ you put those fingers in your mouth/ tasting dreams/ but by the wind grieved, ghost/ we wrote that book together/ the ice machine was just outside the room/ it sounded like the USS Enterprise/ smoking ass/ but you cannot…
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Tim Barrus New York Times
Take notes. Grief, too, comes for everyone. I worked with adolescent boys who had HIV. Those were the days when nothing and no one was safe. Two thirds of them had lost one parent. Many had concomitant issues (various cancers). When someone from the group died, the boys insisted they…
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Tim Barrus and the New York Times
Take notes. I get a lot of Reader Flack from readers that strenuously resent: “Why do you always have to deal with dead kids. It’s depressing us. Poor us.” I write about children I know. Having been in Special Education, I write about what I know. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Multiple…
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Mobsters
Take notes. The morality of losing everything (usually because someone talked) One of the recurrent themes here is organized crime. We have made the thing a little difficult for made guys in the mob to move among us. The mob has weathered bloody insurrections, federal convictions and undercover agents through…
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The End
No mention of alcohol and HIV. I was working with adolescent boys with HIV and alcoholism. I have read thousands of these well-written, cogent pieces. But even the mention in this article – and all the others – is missing a lot. AIDS means stigma. Alcohol does not block the…
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The Internet IS a Pornography
Take Notes. When the Internet was still a baby, many people were excited that art itself could be expressed on the Internet, and virtually bring new art to everyone. The reason the Internet became the Internet was because the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, capitalism, and all the usual suspects like…
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How To Fight Back
The government controls what happens to our bodies. Serfs don’t do policy. Wanna bet. I was abused recently at a hospital where they use force and humiliation to control you. Fight back. MAGA has rendered science political. The analogies to patient’s right are obvious. Nursing staff forcefully stripped me naked…
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Tim Barrus: The Great American Novel
Tim Barrus: The Great American Novel A Novel In A Novel
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Tim Barrus: Naked Before Us
The boys I was dealing with sat on folding chairs in a circle. “Okay, who is going to play Richard Hatch, and who’s going to be Amarosa.” The question was What Is Reality. What is reality on TV. Or. What does it really mean. The boys all had HIV. A…
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Tim Barrus: What Economics
Take notes. As the middle class slides down the rabbit hole, the middle class will encounter exactly what they think they left. The lower middle class. We welcome you to our hovel. I cannot read articles like this without thinking: Where are the poor in this. In Appalachia, we know…
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AND WE’RE WALKING
He’s going down. The crazy daisies will now be his status quo. He’s not going to put himself in another debate with someone who just ragged him into a pool of make-up and sweat. But can she win the election remains the last pseudo-journalistic place to hide. But can she…
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Today Is More Important Than The Past
I do this stuff for the suits. On a personal level, I’m just this anonymous guy – nothing special – on a dirt bike passing by shooting images on a GoPro. Of you. And you. And you. Kids want to know why “You’all don’t wear a helmet is the law…
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The Undecided
Take notes. In the bedrock heart of America, there’s always Vegas. It’s the highwire act in the middle of the dog and pony show. I was doing a magazine piece, and I was stuck in Vegas. There was a long row of one-armed bandits. I wanted this one on tape.…
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Taking Photographs of Other Photographs
The Great American Novel is a novel by Tim Barrus. Release the doves.
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Chichchen Itza
Chichen Itza Take Notes. The starlings have arrived from the moon. All they drink is Scotch. They go barefoot on the boat, and they take photographs of everything they see. They will be sitting in your backyard’s solitary oak. Starlings vote. But it’s the whisky that makes them so articulate.…
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Movie Stars On a Bench
My personal take on this photo has to do with class. Americans live in a Somalia of our making. The Appalachian poor have suicide rates that only keep going up. Those figures kickass Up&Up&Up&Up. Appalachia wrestles with deeply ingrained medieval poverty like no other place on earth. Social statistics for…
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Books Banned In the South
Books Banned in the American South – Peter Rabbit – Tom Sawyer – Huckleberry Finn – The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams – Winnie The Poo – Les Miserables – The Complete Works of William Shakespeare – Frankenstein – Treasure Island – Lolita – The Story of…
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Tim Barrus on Ezra Klein
I can’t take this stuff seriously anymore. All I see are suits and suits and suits. The New York Times is the great-grandpa suits of suits. Your grandfather’s paper is still your grandfather’s paper. What one suit says to another suit. That’s always news. Not a single new idea. Some…
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Tim Barrus: The Great American Novel
A Novel Inside A Novel by Tim Barrus
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I Write What I See
I would like to see both Trump and Biden fighting it out. With bare fists and teeth. It’s how Americans know something is real. Conflict. Engagement. Blood. Continued engagement. Reengagement. To. What. End. We know some of that would be personal. Some of that would be political. All of it…
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Writers Should Plan Their Escape Now
If I was a journalist who wrote this, I would look for a quiet place where I might hide from the Night of the Long Knives. The Night of the Brown Shirts. The Night of the Executions. The Night of the Long March. The Night of Old Suitcases. The Night…
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Dirt Bike Town is a Road Trip on Steroids
What are the constructs of a culture that lend validity to authoritarian rule. What is memory.