Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

October 2025 in Review & SciFi Month 2025

Posted on November 1, 2025 by smellincoffee

Well, so ends October! In Alabama cooler weather finally began drawing near, though it’s rare for it to come inside and take a seat so soon. The cold actually kicked the door down last night: it’s 38 (3 C) at … Continue reading →

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Moviewatch, October 2025

Posted on October 31, 2025 by smellincoffee

Rush Hour 2, 2001. I watched this a few times back in the day, but it’s been fifteen, twenty years I’d say. I remembered it for three things: one, a ridiculous fight scene in a massage parlor in which two … Continue reading →

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The Last Jeffersonian

Posted on October 31, 2025 by smellincoffee

My political biography began during the War on Terror, when I developed strong feelings about foreign intervention and the military-police surveillance state.   While reading Howard Zinn in my college years, I was astonished and delighted to learn of a … Continue reading →

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Ten Strange Ways to Die In Colonial Alabama

Posted on October 31, 2025 by smellincoffee

I’d intended to post this list earlier in the week for the Top Ten Tuesday freebie, but couldn’t remember the name of the book I was using, Alabama Mortality Schedule (1850, Seventh Census of the United States). I stumbled on … Continue reading →

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WWW Wednesday

Posted on October 29, 2025 by smellincoffee

WHAT have you finished reading recently? Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth. Quotations to be posted today. WHAT are you reading now? The Last Jeffersonian, a biography of Grover Cleveland I picked up a week or so ago at a local … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 5 Comments

Selections from Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine

Posted on October 28, 2025 by smellincoffee

But while I learned this early, it was much later that I learned something else, dimly and slowly, through my study of history, mythology and, well, people: that every culture, whether it knows it or not, is built around a … Continue reading →

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Top Ten Tuesday + Halloween Freebie

Posted on October 28, 2025 by smellincoffee

Today’s TTT is a Halloween freebie, and while that should make things easier, it doesn’t. I’m not much for Halloween: my family didn’t celebrate it as a kid, and while I’ve enjoyed quite a few costume parties in. So, I’m … Continue reading →

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Against the Machine

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

At some point during college, I tried to work out what an ideal human society might look like. This was back when I still strongly identified with the left,  but my dreams were not of a world state and a … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, Society and Culture | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey

Posted on October 27, 2025 by smellincoffee

When I was a wee bairn, in the olden days when the Earth was new and dinosaurs roamed the land, I cut my teeth on reading Kathryn Tucker Windham’s collections of ghost stories. KTW, or “Kathryn” as Selmians still call … Continue reading →

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The Impossible Nazi

Posted on October 25, 2025 by smellincoffee

Yes, yes, I know. I said I wouldn’t read more in this series until I’d hit some nonfiction first — but the last book ended with the Dome of the Rock being blown up! How could I resist? The Impossible … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Reviews | Tagged , | 4 Comments