Carla’s Cogitations

Retrospective of Hackney artist Jo Robinson 20th January – 8th February 2026 ARTIST TALK Tuesday 3rd February – 5 pm Ye Olde Rose and Crown 53 Hoe St., London E17 4SA

Droughts, crop blights, and famines cause massive human migrations in every century. So, too, do wars and persecution. In the second half of the eighteenth century persecution and the threat of death caused British loyalists to flee from their homes, their towns, their villages. They sought sanctuary among Indigenous peoples, for Native Americans, like British…

I hate to say this but it behooves me: a lot of people must be thick as planks when it comes to Donald. I am not saying that they lack intelligence in general. They simply lack insight when it comes to Donald. And, of course, I love this old British expression “thick as planks.” According…

Dan died eighteen months ago today, on 13 April 2024 of a sudden and unexpected heart attack, age forty-seven. He was brilliant and with many accomplishments. He was the first student from Hackney Sixth Form College, London, England, to ever win a place at Oxford or Cambrige. With a M.Sc. from Oxford and a doctoral…

I have just asked chatgpt how many people in the United States know the word Schadenfreude. Chatgpt informs me that approximately 50 to 70 percent of Americans have heard the word “schadenfreude” at some time or other – in the newspaper, on television, or on social media. AI informs me that people with a bacherlor’s…

In light of President Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants from the United States, it is imperative to reassess the criteria for deportation.      The first criteria for deportation should examine the connections that the potential deportee has with the Americas. How recently has the person in question or their ancestor arrived in America?…

Is there a single high school book in the United States that informs students that the first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a celebration of a land deal? The Wampanoags had given the “English permission to occupy 12,000 acres of land.” But two years later when “the English invited a number of tribes to a feast…