“Play Like Satie”
“Haunting” is the first word that comes to mind. The melody’s ghost lingered, changing the very air. The Gymnopédies, a word I now know means “Three Nude Dances,” were indeed bare: simple, vulnerable, tender, wistful, melancholy.
Dispatches
Take an Umbrella….
Mary Poppins' umbrella was all about Sufi mysticism, and a Bulgarian umbrella will kill you.
The Slow, But Powerful, Erosion of Flattery
Flattery flattens a person, robbing us of complexity and crippling our will and ability to exchange and understand truths—even the hard ones—we might gain from others.
The Vanities of Age
Want to grow old gracefully? Less striving, more love.
Update from the Shawnee National Forest
It is a redundancy to say heroism must be shown in inopportune times. The current administration recently put 59 million acres of national forestland at greater risk in an opening salvo of a commodity-mindset war against the environment.
What Old Dogs Know
Do these people not know that now is now is now is NOW?
Billy Joel Documentary Like a Good Novel
One of the reasons I like the term “novelistic” for these sorts of documentaries is that it stresses how they deal in the mysteries of creation, its meaning, and its emotion. Joel has a song from 1977 called “Vienna,” with the refrain, “When will you realize / Vienna waits for you.”
The Nuclear War Films We Refuse to See, but Must See
The War Game and Threads have no time for dramatic trifles of characters dealing with nuclear war from afar, or even the relative safety of a military bunker. Instead, both films plunge us deep into their dreaded, adrenaline-soaked horrors.
Living at Odds With One’s Country
How do we stay plugged into a society that is fast losing any moral compass—and keep our own?
A Queasy Selling of the Family Heirlooms
I am not sure which would appall my mother more: “dip chiller” to name her receptacle for delicate, extravagant shrimp, or me asking an artificial intelligence to remind me what she taught me.