• Personal Reflections

    A First Take on India: The Road From Delhi

    March 22, 2016 - By 

    So I have made my way to India with my 17-year-old daughter and a traveling companion who knows the technical ins and outs of the Internet in order to help smooth the way for a Telemedicine project to be initiated in the low mountain town (3,000-foot elevation) of Nahan, which, if you kept going east up the mountain and could fly, would land you in a few hours in Nepal and the Himalayas. It’s about six hours northeast by car from Delhi, which we negotiated yesterday courtesy of our ever amiable driver, Mr. Singh, and our host, Dr. Suresh Sablok…

  • Film/TV

    Intrusion From Time Past: A Review of “45 Years”

    March 14, 2016 - By 

    We spend perhaps unconscionable amounts of our adult lives marveling at the passage of time, continually shocked at the zip line that seems to have transported us from our 20s to 50s and beyond in a long breathless moment when our eyes were apparently closed. “Last time I saw you…” we begin, lowering our hand to toddler height as we come upon the suddenly grown children of friends and relatives we see only sporadically. And the kids smile politely, despite having heard the identical prattle a thousand times before. British director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh gives this and other aspects…

  • Personal Reflections - Religion

    Here Then Gone: The Short Half-Life of Ecstatic Moments

    March 11, 2016 - By 

     It was one of those Moments. The daylight waning, the sky a magnificent stew of cirrus wisps both vertical and horizontal to the west and south, stratus puff balls north and east, the trending-toward-full moon already up and peeking from behind the latter. At that still-point dusky moment transitioning from day to early eve, with the world perfectly poised between its in- and out-breath, the color palette of pale oranges, golds, purples, pinks, magentas and more seemed both fathomless and intoxicating. And then came the geese. They were in their classic extended V formation, winging southwest towards their home in…

  • Politics/Culture - Religion

    Done With Dogma: The Trend Toward No-Religion, No-Political-Party

    March 6, 2016 - By 

    Quick: What’s the fastest growing religious group in the United States? And the fastest growing (political) party preference of the voting population in California? Well, it’s not the Methodists and it’s not the Republicans, and you probably knew that much already. But would it surprise you at all that the answers are “no-religion” to the first and “no-party-preference” to the second? If you figured as much, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of an important development in our cultural and civic life. One that helps explain, at least to some degree, the continuing and somewhat confounding relevance of Bernie…

  • Politics/Culture

    Five Things I’ve Come to Understand About the Trump Phenomenon

    March 1, 2016 - By 

    Has there ever been a more spectacular misreading of the political climate by people like, uh, me, who laughed merrily when Donald Trump announced for the Republican presidential race last year? Hahaha. He of course had no chance to draw more than a smattering of support from the far fringes of the voting public, but his entry at least ensured that we would enjoy some ongoing buffoonery from America’s most unabashed and ridiculous celebrity. We could look to him to provide a kind of comic ballast for the sheer awfulness of Ted Cruz, the blandness of Jeb Bush, the snarls…