Do Not Tempt the Universe: TCR at Sea
The bigger the venture, the more the universe messes with you.
By Sacha Mardou
Transiting The Ditch: The Common Reader at Sea
A friend texted recently to say he had bought a new yacht. He asked if I would like to help him transit it from Fort Pierce, Florida, to his home port in Maryland, a trip of about a thousand miles up the East Coast. “I can probably do that,” I said, spilling my coffee.
Matching Style for Style in Politics
What I have been wondering—as I have for years—is why Dems cannot seem to counter crude schoolyard putdowns and the verbose, word-cloud attack called the Gish Gallop.
Mother Jones and the Graveyard of Labor History
Macoupin County, Illinois, which holds Virden and Mt. Olive, has other important labor sites. But Mother Jones’s grave and two-story granite monument on the outskirts of Mt. Olive might be seen to mark a split in the soul of working-class America that is still evident in our nation’s division.
Anubis Lives, Thanks to Joanna Karpowicz
For an image of death, Joanna Karpowicz’s Anubis is a figure of calm, even stability; of seeing and listening; of endurance. He has power. As someone said of Chekhov’s narrative voice, it is as if he watches human life with great sympathy from somewhere very far away.
Damn the Torpedoes, We Have Bigger Problems
Symonds’s book “The US Navy: A Concise History“ surprises, as it is also a history of technology and its political effects, showing, for example, how shifts from sail to coal to oil to nuclear power each affected our national capabilities and global ambitions in ways no one foresaw.
Jim Henson: Idea Man a Moving Tribute to a Unique Artist
We have gotten used to retrospectives showing terrible behaviors and scandals, but there is little of that here, other than a marriage troubled by absence, and the implication that Henson was so driven that he may have worked himself to death at 53, a loss for us all.
Pixelborn as an Evil Robin Hood
Pixelborn was created by Bulgarian software engineer Pavel Kolev, entirely on his own. People have loved it in the way they love Disney characters and stories—which is to say wildly—and it had 50,000 users last fall. However, using Disney “intellectual property,” as the lawyers like to say, was always inviting trouble.
The Weird Texture of History
What am I seeing?, I have wondered as the names, dates, events, and sensory impressions pile up. By coincidence I found the film “Zerograd” this week, the Soviet entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards in 1989.
WWII Bronze Star Recipient Amy Lois Nickles, Updated
The letter was V-Mail, as it was called, for corresponding with service members overseas then. It was strict in its single-sheet economy, as letters were photographed then shipped on microfilm and printed on the other end. Add the need for operational security, and the handwritten letter has a pinched but personable tone.
Book Fairs Prove We Might Make It After All
When I saw the full lots, I knew reports of the death of the book had been greatly exaggerated.
Documentary Shows the Secret of Umberto Eco’s Personal Library
This documentary lets Eco eternally stalk his prey of a desired volume in his beautifully utilitarian library. But most of the film exists to let him continue to express a fierce belief in print culture.