Monthly Archives August 2024

You know what makes me happy? That “Happy,” the 48th “Brilliant Song” in this series, has garnered 239,107 comments since it landed on You Tube a decade ago. Along with: 1.3 billion (that’s “billion”-with-a-“b”) views and 8.7 million thumbs-up. (Though for context: the all-time leading You Tube video through early August is “Baby Shark,” a children’s song-and-dance from South Korea at 14.9 billion views since 2016.)

But “billion” is a most hefty number indeed, reflected in a recent comment on top of the “Happy” pile, which exclaims, “WE STEALING THE MOON WITH THIS ONE.”

And so we are with that felicitous phrase that nonetheless implies larceny of something—human happiness— that should perhaps be regarded as a birthright to at least some degree, yes?

Like Bobby McFerrin long before him, Pharrell Williams does something both remarkably simple and ultimately profound: He writes and sings in praise of pure...

Has there been a stranger, more cataclysmic turn of events in recent American history than what we have been witnessing since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump just six dizzying weeks ago? It brings to mind the quote of unknown origin but frequently misattributed to Lenin: “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.”

The failed assassination, remarkable for many reasons including that it is almost completely out of the news now, marked the beginning of multiple events that have changed virtually every dynamic of the 2024 presidential race. Until then, the campaign had resembled a competition between severely out-of-tune orchestras under the unsteady batons of two aged, punch-drunk men, all of it witnessed by long-suffering patrons wondering whether they shouldn’t just go home and cancel what remained of their season tickets.

Then the shooting, followed in qui...

The relatively raging success that Billy Collins has enjoyed as a poet has not come without detractors who decry his free-flowing use of straightforward language and thematic material. This approach makes his poems generally easy to comprehend and, not unimportantly for him and his publishers, huge sellers—at least in comparison to most poetry that has always been the poor stepchild of the literary world.

The now 83-year-old Collins has published 18 volumes of poetry since his 1977 debut volume. The first half-dozen or so went the usual small or university press route that sold a few hundred, maybe up to a (blockbuster!) few thousand volumes and netted him six cents in his bank account. (O.K., it may have been $600, but you get the point…)

And then, a kind of literary/commercial magic happened...

Call me macabre, but among my favorite traversings are graveyards. My reasons are simple enough: a near-complete absence of vehicle traffic, foot traffic of mostly the solemn and respectful kind, and generally quiet surroundings that invite reduced blood pressure, heightened sensitivity to the natural world and internal contemplation of the inexhaustibly rich subject of finitude.

This means that walking graveyards (and cemeteries—often used interchangeably but with a slight difference, explained below*) is a common activity for Mary and me not only at home, but often on vacation travel as well.

No, graveyards are not quite as much a lure as hiking trails, parks, museums and brewpubs...

A thought experiment: You have two people seated in front of you of whom you must ask to provide you with information that may cast them in a slightly negative light, but whose truthful answer will very likely save your life. If they lie or distort the information they have in order to protect their reputation, you will probably die. They won’t, but they will have to live with the moral consequences of their decision for the rest of their lives.

These two people are Donald Trump and his former vice-president, Mike Pence. And they give you completely different information on the subject at hand.

So, the question: Which person would you be inclined to believe?

Followed by: How many seconds/minutes would it take you to arrive at that decision?

What are the factors that would drive your evaluation?

Why aren’t we paying more attention to this remarkable, utterly flabbergasting story, one so Shakespearean in its...