Helping My Friend’s Garden Grow
Rocks and stones are reality agents, signifying only their own existence. Irreality stems from perception, thought, and language. In this respect, stones are easy; people and their choices are hard.
By Todd Decker
Found Objects: Curb Chairs
Some chairs are sons of bitches, of course, and deserve what they get. But so many chairs say, “Rest in me, weary one. Rest your back against mine.”
The Holdovers is a New Holiday Classic
Paul Giamatti, who won and has been nominated for dozens of awards in his career, was passed over by the Academy Awards for his work with Alexander Payne in “Sideways.” The similarity of the role in “The Holdovers” will make it interesting to see if he is nominated this time.
Oscar Nominee The Taste of Things is Abundant with Passion
“The Taste of Things” has so many set-pieces of cooking that it feels like a dare to override the conventions of drama, which might seem to require that the meal get cooked, served, and eaten so the difficulties of relationship can be ennacted.
Cartoonist Roz Chast Finds Herself in the Midwest
Chast was sweet and grateful but prone to trying something else. She insisted we go on, she would be fine in the chilly dark outside the massive locked building, which we ignored, no doubt to her discomfort.
Jerry Seinfeld Hates Everything, but He Is Good at It
Seinfeld said when his sitcom “bombed” originally, appearing in a bad slot midweek after Unsolved Mysteries, St. Louis was the one market that kept it alive long enough to become a huge success.
Time as the Spooky Thing
Even without tricks, time is spooky. Things move in its medium, are changed, disappear as if never formed. We acknowledge this uncanniness with a holiday at the end of the growing season devoted to ancient fears of death and magic.
Disappointment and Horror
We expect to get our way and often think we will get away with cheap and easy and quick. Nowhere is this more obvious than with food.
Not-So-Random Acts of Kindness
Shepherd’s Centers is a network of fifty-seven affiliate chapters across the country that offers some 165,000 people “services such as transportation, handy helpers, friendly visits, grocery shopping, and respite care to help older adults remain living in their own homes and communities.”
Socialism 2023 Was the Sound of Grievances, but No Solutions
Attendees of Socialism 2023, a four-day conference in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, wanted freedom from the existing system but admitted its dominion (the “dom” in “freedom”) and the movement’s current lack of large-scale agency in it.
When Advertising Gloms on to Disaster
Whatever you might think about advertising as an engine of the market economy, it is often juxtaposed with death in the media, nowhere more than online, and it is a symptom. It is a relief to lie in my bed at night and read the print issue, which I got as if by the publisher’s afterthought in a discount deal for my online subscription.
Visiting the Apple Orchard a Return to Eden—With Donuts
Gathering food locally at a local pace with local technology may not be quite as convenient in some cases, but it roots us more firmly in our own lives. This, I think, is the subconscious delight of visiting a local apple orchard in fall.