Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Occupying My Thoughts: I Was at Some of the OWS Predecessors

Councilman: When was the last time you cut your hair? Drama Teacher: When was the time you brushed your teeth, sir? Billy Jack, 1971 Protester Chris Johnson, 32: Occupy "has opened up a dialogue that hasn’t existed since I've been alive." #OWS Brian Stelter tweet, 11/15/2011 That exchange from...
              

Saturday, December 24, 2011

O, Holy Night!

  Christmas Eve is the most distinctive night of the year. As an adult the frisson comes from the commemoration of Verbum caro factum est: And the Word was made flesh. In simplest terms, the creator of life sent his son to help people cope with the painful difficulties of being human. Which...
              

Saturday, December 17, 2011

A Visit from a Friend of Dudley's from The Bishop's Wife

I’m not particularly fond of angel pictures, neither tv nor features. I never got into Touched by an Angel, or Highway to Heaven, and even Holly Hunter’s grittier Saving Grace doesn’t draw me in. But there was an angel named Dudley who made an impression. I saw The Bishop’s Wife as a child, and I...
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Friday, December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens: So Women Aren't Funny, but We Can Appreciate You & Kipling

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling I was a fan of Christopher Hitchens's literary side, not his political or theological pursuits. I love that one his last articles was a reflection on Rudyard Kipling for Slate. I enjoyed many of his literary essays for The Atlantic through the years, and am so happy that they are online to read again. But it was his hilarious,...
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Friday, November 25, 2011

My Dinner with Julian Barnes

Not really, but I had a lovely little intersection with Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, which I'm about 3/4 the way through, on Thanksgiving. I cooked this year for the first time in many years. The gathering of the family was going to be small (with a larger gathering on Friday), so I made...
              

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanks Be to Buffy and Blogging

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Do I Like Parks & Recreation? I only SUPER do

Leslie: Due to my campaign, the romantic aspect of our relationship is over. And I'm totally fine with that. But Ben and I have so much in common we're amazing friends. And friendship is better because friends help you move, they drive you to the airport. Boyfriends just . . . love you and marry...
              

Friday, November 11, 2011

Armistice Day in the Digital Age: 11 am on 11/11/11

There is something inherently cosmic/Matrix when the numeric dates that we look at so casually in everyday life reset themselves into such a clean declaration of the primary of the binary code: 1. It also looks like the great slot machine of life has spun and landed on all stars.Oddly enough, the magnetism...
         

Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Relentless Pollution of Chongqing

One of Andrew Sullivan's regular features is The View From Your Window, where he posts photos that readers send him of the view they are looking at as they blog, or do work of any sort. This one is from a high rise in Chongqing, China. I was there in 2010. When I first woke up I thought that it was...
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Music for All Souls Day

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine "Grant them eternal rest, O Lord" I find great beauty in the propers for the Requiem Mass, and on All Souls I find myself drawn to the musical settings of these most important and final of words. The idea of eternity is so profound, so unimaginable, that sublime...
              

Friday, October 21, 2011

Halfway Down: Milne Helps with the "Middleness"

A.A. Milne's poem positively leaps to mind today, my annual personal New Year's Day, with this particular birthday encumbered with the sense of middleness. Halfway down the stairs Is a stair Where I sit. There isn't any Other stair Quite like It. I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; So this...
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Thursday, October 20, 2011

21st Century All For One, On My Birthday!

It made me smile to see that the 3D, 21st century, action packed Three Musketeers opens tomorrow, on my birthday! Given my love for the novel, what are the odds it would be created and released this year, when my birthday is on a Friday? I have a feeling it will be awful—why couldn't Guy Ritchie have...
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Monday, October 3, 2011

Love Among the Torts: 25th Anniversary of L.A. Law

The sexy sax riff wailing over the black screen to the declarative thump of the car trunk, both primal and urban. As opening credits go, it offered the total package.And so L.A. Law announced itself to weekly prime time with a classic Mike Post back-beat composition on Oct. 3, 1986 (after its two-hour...
              

Friday, September 23, 2011

Libra’s National Holiday

It’s Autumnal Equinox day! To most people that means equal length of day and night. Of course it’s much more complicated than that, but at the least it’s when the sun “appears to cross the celestial equator from south to north.”The sense of evenness, of balance, is the cornerstone of most new age therapies...
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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Great War & Modern Memory: The Sublime Gash of War Horse

"Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected... Its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its ends... Millions were destroyed because two people, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort, were shot... But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since....
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Saturday, September 10, 2011

Why I Want to Remember

Because the tales of the few survivors from near the impact zones are harrowing beyond belief. The 911 tapes released reveal the desperate, terrified people calling for help, screaming about the heat and the flames and the smoke, begging for someone to “come get us,” until they succumbed to the fire...
              

Friday, September 9, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

My Own Open Window: The Literary Meets the Culinary

“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn." Nowhere does our inner sensibility get such an intriguing expression than in the furnishings of our home. It’s a part of human nature that Restoration...
              

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Swing Time: "No Cuffs!"

Fred Astaire was born in the last year of the 19th century. Today, in the second decade of the 21st century, we pause for a moment to consider Swing Time——one of his greatest achievements——on its 75th anniversary. The big assessments all are available to read: Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire and...
              
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