I could not relax, walking the bike path today, among people blaring country music, the guy shouting at heaven, large unleashed dogs thinking heroic thoughts, and clouds of biting gnats in the sun. But what spiked my irritation was the group of five middle-aged guys on expensive…
One of my old friend’s names is a synonym for king. I have known him since we were maybe eight, when his mother placed him in my mom’s Cub Scout den. We were all rascals, but he and I were fatherless and poor. Due to the authority of his size,…
Scholar Mark Edmundson says, “[Harold] Bloom once told a seminar I was in that he used to ask people he’d just met what was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Cuts to the chase, doesn’t it? I’m more inclined to ask about the best.” Why can’t we…
"Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" is a happy story. The documentary is framed by interviews Sacks did after his diagnosis of terminal metastatic cancer in 2015. He is surrounded by friends and colleagues; he reads from his drafts; he is forthcoming but also plays the joker by telling stories, such as how in his loveless days he cooled his “turgid member” by thrusting it into orange Jell-O for relief.
Screenshot of David Klein and his partner in a video titled “Saturday Morning so good to me!” An old friend (his name, coincidentally, Charlie) bought my kids and me a present recently: A chance to find a golden tag and then to win a candy factory.
Image by Evan-Amos, Wikipedia Commons If you have ever been truly poor (or a soldier or mountain man), you understand that having potable water, edible food, immediate physical safety, lifegiving medicine, heat in the winter, and basic hygiene of body/clothes/housing (including an absence of vermin), are what matter. There…
There is something almost magical about a display of humble, well-used tools, as a physical manifestation of a life and calling. It is evidence of the culling of what does not work, and the re-use of and care for what does. It reminds that the tool is not the knowledge, but that which permits knowledge to act; it shows a piety to craft, and a mastery like saintliness of an art.
The latest reading of "The Princess Bride," in support of Democratic victory in swing-state Wisconsin, was fun to watch but had its share of lags, unsynched voices, dead mics, pixellated video, and the tops of heads of people reading from texts. That is to say, it perfectly mimicked the Zoom meetings of our time.
Screenshot of YouTube video by News2Share in August. The title essay of Tatyana Tolstaya’s Pushkin’s Children: Writings on Russia and Russians is an account of the changes in feeling toward Russian writers, within Russia, over time. The essay questions the writer’s role, as artist and as citizen, and…
The new movie shows Bond has retired since we last saw him. I am interested in that narrative problem too. How does an untouchable retire, as if he had passed his career as a middle-school teacher? What does he do all day? Where? With whom? Can he sleep?
Donnie was sitting on his porch when we passed. It had been three days since the hurricane. His house was missing half its shingles, and the city had no power or water. Next door, workmen were ripping up the damaged rubber roof of a business, in order…
My son and I labored around our property. We got lucky; there was little damage to the house itself. But it was still hard work, in subtropical humidity, full sun, and heat indices over 100 degrees. I was the kind of exhausted where I was mouth-breathing, and when I bent over I drooled on my shoe. But cleanup is no joke, and reports of heart attacks and heat strokes are frequent.