• Fiction

    Dementia’s Mottled Shadows:
    Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came
    Over the Mountain”

    January 30, 2022 - By 

    Dementia hovers over America’s 54 million seniors (most recent 2019 figures) like a slightly noxious cloud that either already affects some 7 million of them or has the remaining 47 million (and their families) making nervous jokes about constantly misplacing their keys. While dementia comes in various forms and severities (some 70% from Alzheimer’s disease), its common core is heartbreak. These emotional impacts are borne not only by those who fall to it, but in many ways, even more heavily by family members and other intimates who must watch their beloved not merely decline and die, but in the often…

  • Film/TV - Plays

    Hark! Get Thee to Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” !!

    January 22, 2022 - By 

    For the average person born and brewed in everyday contemporary English, reading Shakespeare is no walk in the park. Despite his essentially one-name status reflecting a worldwide reputation as a playwright and poet barely this side of a god, Shakespeare goes either under- or unread by the vast majority of people largely because of his arcane, at-first-glance impenetrable prose, which can be a challenge for even the most learned readers. The Irish critic Fintan O’Toole captured this truth with his usual panache in his slim-but-packed 2002 volume, “Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy.” Recapitulating…

  • Odds & Ends - Philosophy - Politics/Culture

    American Distemper:
    On Not Letting Our Daubers Down

    January 16, 2022 - By 

    Roger Craig was an avuncular figure in the sometimes rough-and-tumble, sometimes over-sentimentalized world of major league baseball. He was a better-than-his-record starting pitcher mid-20th century, enjoying a 12-year career and four World Series appearances before staying in the game first as a scout and coach and then through a successful decade-long run as a manager. It was during his eight-season run (1985-92) managing the San Francisco Giants in that cosmopolitan city that the slightly drawling Durham, North Carolina native became known and celebrated for a down-home phrase to keep his players’ spirits up, especially when they were leaving the clubhouse after…

  • Politics/Culture

    Ten Essential Truths About January 6

    January 6, 2022 - By 

       *** 1. It was the only time in American history a president refused the peaceful transfer of power.   2.  It was the only time in American history a president refused the peaceful transfer of power.   3. It was the only time in American history a president refused the peaceful transfer of power.   4. It was the only time in American history a president refused the peaceful transfer of power.   5. It was the only time in American history a president refused the peaceful transfer of power.   6. It was the only time in American…

  • Poetry - Politics/Culture

    Kick-Ass Black Woman Tells It: Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”

    January 1, 2022 - By 

    Before she died in 2014, Maya Angelou had for decades enjoyed oil wells pumping in her living room, gold mines spewing riches in her backyard, and for a nice sexy touch, she appeared to keep diamonds at the meeting of her thighs. (No word on whether they came from a diamond mine in her bedroom…) We know this because she described these mighty assets in her 1978 volume from Random House, “And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems,” one selection simply dropping the “And” to make “Still I Rise” the near-title poem in the collection. (The poem is printed…