• Poetry

    The Ship That Never Comes In:
    Philip Larkin’s “Next, Please”

    June 30, 2018 - By 

    A friend was telling me recently that she had hosted a childhood friend for a weekend visit, and in the runup to it she had greatly looked forward to the time they were to spend together. As it turned out, it was wonderful and all she had hoped for, she beamed. Which, she noted, was a great relief, because “It doesn’t always turn out that way.” Indeed it doesn’t. In his much-anthologized poem, “Next, Please,” English poet Philip Larkin, a brooding sort as perhaps a majority of poets this side of Mary Oliver are, suggested that it almost never does, and that…

  • Film/TV

    The Holy Ground of
    Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

    June 24, 2018 - By 

    “I saw people throwing pies in each others’ faces, and I thought: ‘This could be a wonderful tool. Why is it being used this way?’” So says a lanky, exceedingly soft-spoken Presbyterian minister with the classic middle America name of Fred Rogers, a man who turned children’s television in the latter part of the 20th century into a kind of ode to basic human decency rather than the casually cruel and empty-headed drivel it often was and still too often remains. By the end of his 31-year tenure ministering to children’s souls via a daily half-hour public television show, Rogers had…

  • Music

    Sixth Annual “Songs of Summer”

    June 21, 2018 - By 

    Three songs, summer-themed, on or very near the solstice. A respite, a celebration, a salute to whatever shreds of sanity, shoots of hope and shards of joy  we may be able to cultivate in a world that often seems hellbent, for rather baffling reasons, on denying them all. Welcome to the Sixth Annual Songs of Summer! If you’re new to this space and wondering why so-and-such song isn’t in the lineup, it may well have already had its moment in the sun, sun, sun, either here or here or here or here or here. (Those will take you to years one through five…

  • Film/TV - Odds & Ends

    Light and Dark in the Arts: What’s Your Pleasure?

    June 16, 2018 - By 

    A small group of us was discussing possible movie choices for the upcoming weekend a few nights ago when one person floated the possibility of “Chesil Beach,” the adaptation of a dark Ian McEwan novel about a rapidly failing, misbegotten marriage, almost shocking in its misery. Someone else, a psychotherapist who spends his days listening to those and many other such woeful tales, brightly asked, “Why would you want to subject yourself to that?” Now, the therapist can most certainly be excused for abstaining from the prospect of extending the rigors of his day job into his leisure hours. (And paying to do…

  • Politics/Culture

    Absorbing Trump’s Blows

    June 9, 2018 - By 

    I’ve noticed a certain weariness setting in among friends, associates, myself. Gotta get on with life, maintain our joy, equanimity, hope. Can’t live in a state of permanent apoplexy and indignation. Please, can’t we enjoy just an hour’s, an evening’s, a day’s activity and conversation without alluding to HIM and all the things that he touches and disparages and tries to ruin?   So we quietly avoid the whole subject, or hold our hands in front of our face in mock horror when someone mentions his name, and we proclaim only half-jokingly, “Nooooo, I can’t take any more, please!”   And we understand,…