What if Jesus came back, opened a women's health clinic, and began providing abortion services? Wouldn't the Christian Right crucify Him all over again?

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The media keeps warning us that we're on the brink of a recession -- but aren't two of the hallmarks of a recession high unemployment and low levels of consumer spending? Right now, we have the exact opposite of that. Maybe it would be more accurate (and less alarmist) to say that our economy is now (permanently?) prone to a series of shocks, and that our latest shock, rampant inflation, was brought about by supply chain disruptions caused by the triple whammy of COVID, climate change, and Russia's war in Ukraine.

The Federal Reserve, of course, can try to curb inflation by raising interest rates on home, auto, and business loans: a useful strategy if interest rate hikes aren't used as a blunt instrument studded with nails, as Fed chairman Paul Volcker used them in 1980, when he lowered inflation by raising interest rates to nearly 20 percent, quashing both inflation and the economy. (Thanks for the double-digit unemployment rate, dude.) So, forty years on, I'm assuming the Fed's pilots know enough to try for a soft landing...

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I keep coming back to "Half-Price Hardback," a disquieting piece by the late Australian poet, Les Murray. "As the bookshops die/in country towns," it begins, and goes on to describe, in twenty brief lines, our literary reality, one where nothing difficult or unusual can exist, let alone be promoted. "All's preserved slow TV," Murray writes -- in other words, more of the same -- which you can verify by browsing the aisles of your nearest chain bookstore: full of books, and mostly empty.