Telling the Homer G. Phillips Story at Last

    You read Climbing the Ladder, Chasing the Dream and wonder, dazed, why no one put all this rich material together before. At once intimate and sweeping, the book is the first full history of St. Louis’s most extraordinary, embattled, and glorious hospital. Homer G. Phillips commands quite a few superlatives: it trained more […]

New Poetry-Film Festival Underway

    I had never registered that there are film festivals dedicated to poetry and filmmaking until a friend told me recently about a new one, called the International Poetry Film Festival. International Poetry Film Festival judges are currently considering 41 short films, from several countries, in categories such as Narrative, Animated, Documentary, and Experimental. […]

A Real Tree or a Fake One?

          Section by section, I lug the plastic, decapitated Christmas tree up from the basement. This is a joyless precursor to the part I love: each of us carefully hanging our favorite ornaments, stepping back, adjusting, and then sinking into the couch and gazing at years of Christmases. But I miss […]

What Do You See in These Twigs?

    When I looked at Michael Eastman’s twig sculptures, I saw people. A man reaching out to his child. A woman flirting. Curious what this revealed about my psyche, I casually mentioned the experience to Robert Cloninger, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Washington University. “These twigs could be a Rorschach inkblot test!” I told […]

Sheltering, Again, But in Winter

    We have lived on the Gulf and watched hurricanes organize off the swell of West Africa, grind their way across the expanse of the sea, thread their way through and over the islands, and turn north on the current to hit our coast. We have lived on the Atlantic and experienced small hurricanes […]

In Honor of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Who Gave Us Flow

    My exultant “Ha!” woke the library. I had just read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s definition of “flow”—that magical feeling of getting so caught up in what you are doing that you lose track of where you are, what time it is, who might want something of you. I knew that feeling, and I craved it. […]

Sound and Fury

          I thought I was going deaf. Selectively deaf, only to the dialogue of certain films. Leaning forward or cranking the volume (which sometimes only made it worse) I seriously considered turning on those stupid subtitles. Then I happened onto an article that assured me the film industry acknowledges the problem. […]

Some Animals Are More Equal: A Review of State Funeral

    A fascinating 2019 documentary called State Funeral is available now on MUBI, but be forewarned: the film literally moves at the speed of a dirge, as it shows the public funeral of Joseph Stalin, who died March 5, 1953. The footage of grief-stricken crowds used by director Sergei Loznitsa came from “tens of […]

Make It a Double, Robot

    If you needed proof that we have lost our soul, just head to a bar that has lost its bartender—to a robot. In times of loneliness, sorrow, or despair, some people go to church, and some go to a bar. Those working behind that stretch of polished wood need all the patience possessed […]

101st Airborne Flyover Under Investigation

    A few months ago I asked the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles, if I could ride around with their Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) for a week, in order to write about the helicopters and a historical anniversary for the Division. The 101st is an Air Assault division now (helicopters used for combat troop […]