Breaking the Flatness of the Present

Coenties Slip. Photo by John Griswold   The feeling comes over me at unexpected times—walking down a street of stone townhomes at dawn, lights in bay windows, stairs and gardens mounded with new snow. Sensing that the skyscraper-as-public-art was designed instead as a taunt and a cashing-in on…

The World Trade Center as the Future

In its planning phase after September 11, One World Trade was commonly called the Freedom Tower in response to the attacks. It was later named, more commercially but just as defiantly, for the old address of the North Tower, though it actually stands on the former site of 6 World Trade Center, also destroyed on 9-11.

Of Pilgrimage

When my scale gets out of whack—domestic life bullied by a universal preponderance or inner life swelling to block out the physical world—I find it is time to reintroduce one realm to the other. It is cause for pilgrimage.

‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Not Just “a Bootleg ‘Scooby-Doo’”

If Tyrone was not directed by Peele, I thought, the filmmakers must be using his methods, as the trailer seemed to show a Blaxploitation knockoff that pointed at the Tuskegee experiment.

Technology and Stories

The change in film technology is another of those things, like the technology of warfare itself, that sometimes leave us agog, like British Army officers sitting atop camels in a desert and watching one of the first biplanes fly past.

A Brand Ends But the Idea Remains

Anchor Steam was part of my first awareness, in the 1970s, that different traditions were at work elsewhere, and that people who might know such things believed those traditions and processes and products were superior to what mainstream corporations provided on a much bigger scale.

Encountering ‘The Bear’

While “The Bear” has been nominated for comedy awards, and Jeremy Allen White has won some of them, there is a dark streak of pain not easily reconciled to the comedy of situation and its quirky characters, even in the sense of “tragicomedy.”

Elvis Is Still the King

Elvis is still the king. Right? I mean, he is 68 now, but that is a lot younger than many other canonical rock stars.

Happy Day, Fathers

I have tried as a father myself to fashion the best of both modeled worlds. If I have made homes comfortable, cooked, done domestic chores, and served all roles in raising and supporting sons, I have also headed out to have a look around and brought back my own answers, which I try to communicate.

Kevin Will Never Stop Looking for Love

Kevin “belongs” to the farm family across the county road and fields. Lee hears that people think peacocks are pretty, but they are supposedly good with pest control too. There used to be three more, but Kevin is now a rare bird in these parts.

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