Poor Things, Us
With “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos has given us a film that is funny, sharp, poignant, imaginative, and visually stunning. I wonder if he knew his baby-woman would also summon a New Year’s resolution for the other end of life.
Dispatches
Let Charles Dickens’s The Chimes Invigorate Your Sense of Hope
“The Chimes” is not likely to be adapted for the screen any time soon, uneven as it is when stacked against “A Christmas Carol.” But Toby Veck can be counted among Dickens’s great, undiscovered characters. And the story’s warning, amidst our own ongoing sour times, rings as true as its namesake.
Tom Smothers, a Lesson in Modernity
As a child of an ironic, counter-cultural age I had to find my way through comic appearances to serious intent and personal bravery. Tommy Smothers was maybe the first entertainer I understood in this respect.
How Zero-Sum Thinking Divides Us
Zero-sum thinking shows up all over the place. It puddles in the Congressional aisle no one dares cross. It puts up trade barriers, panics at trade deficits, and insists on protectionism, isolationism, nationalism. It builds walls, both literal and figurative, to keep out strangers.
Sandra Day O’Connor Shamed Me by Example
Sandra Day O’Connor’s role on the bench was big picture, as big as it gets, taking in the past and the future, precedent and legacy, along with the current context.
Sympathy for the Prolific Rocker of Harry Arader
If you wish more records sounded like the Moody Blues, Jefferson Starship or John Cale of the early 1970s, you should be listening to Harry Arader. The grooves, chord progressions, harmonic intervals, and guitar licks all would sound at home on album-oriented rock.
White Man’s Burden (Re)Visited
“White Man’s Burden” is the belated lesson of empathy taught by a substitute teacher with one message and 90 minutes of time to fill. Its most valuable lesson is that, having watched it, we are reminded that millions of people endure not just 90 minutes of condescension, oppression, and racism projected on a movie screen, but a lifetime of all three.
The Eternal Christmas Tree
A real tree is a sacrifice, a once-living being nailed to its stand, bleeding sap, a star on its crown. The artificial tree has no smell, no bark, no particularity. It never faced a north wind or nurtured a cardinal.
My Christmas Seasons in Ghana and the United States
Each year, as the Christmas season approaches, I find myself instinctively measuring the present against a backdrop of my Ghanaian childhood.
How Black Migration in St. Louis Sparked Generation Nope
What was once America’s fourth-largest city remains an enigma consistently met with collective ambivalence. There is a dark side to the city, especially when it comes to racial disparities. Historically, decades of oppression have left a bad taste in the mouths of many Black St. Louisans.