Audiences might ask, what do those three hours “do”? The answer may be: to portray the helpless, confused feeling of disbelief at our not-knowing in a world where enormous, supra-state power is wielded by gangsters, weirdos, grifters, criminals, and haters, whose choices weaken our societies and make our lives worse.
Stark’s electronic fires crackled in the open air. The strings, clarinet, and keyboard of the Unheard-of Ensemble breathed as a fire can only dream of breathing.
Do not be fooled by the gentleness of the landscapes in Women Impressionists and the Land, a revelatory new exhibit created by Saint Louis Art Museum curator Simon Kelly. The deer at the woods’ edge, the children in the gardens, the sisters in lacy dresses, the ponds rippling above…
This is not an anti-multiculturalism rant. It is instead a warning. States composed of different peoples do not fail because they are composed of different peoples. They fail because many of those different peoples refuse to equally share the benefits and the burdens of a common state.
Before, Anne Carson’s work was dismissed as bewildering; now, Carson said, “I can’t do anything wrong, but which really means people are offering equally blind judgments of the work…. I guess people are just afraid to think.” A Nobel will only exacerbate this.
He abhorred writerly tricks and happily-ever-after endings. And he was deeply realistic. He knew there was no way to bring opposing beliefs and values into harmony. Hold back the chaos, in other words, and allow as much human flourishing as possible.
Two books published in the summer of 2025 address the Caitlin Clark phenomenon. The higher profile belongs to Christine Brennan, a national sports columnist at “USA Today,” whose “On Her Game,” narrates Clark’s rookie season in the WNBA with vigor and detail. Howard Megdal’s “Becoming Caitlin Clark,” by contrast, assesses Clark’s rise from manifold perspectives, explaining its controversies with sensitivity and insight.
If you want to understand the details of these ideologies and how their adherents have translated ideas into policy, you would do well to read independent scholar Laura Field’s book “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.”
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” is by turns charming, troubling, funny, dark, romantic, nonsensical, and weird. More than many other movies, it continues to inspire questions about its layers of inventiveness, even though its premise—that specific inputs cannot explain magical output—is in the news every morning now.
A “coign” is a jutting-out corner or high point that gives you an excellent view of whatever you are trying to see. I was trying to see…what? A different world, graceful and mysterious, exquisitely colored and lit.