• Film/TV - Personal Reflections

    Why I Quit Watching “The Sopranos”

    January 27, 2024 - By 

    When my daughter was four or five years old, we took her to a highly touted “children’s movie” animation having to do with the escapades of a pony finding its way through fraught circumstances. I remember neither the title nor anything else to do with the plot save this: at one point, the pony was tied to a stake and thrashing helplessly as foreboding music swelled and some evil force prepared to descend upon it. The movie ended for us right then because my daughter began to sob uncontrollably, fear and sorrow etched full upon her face. After a few…

  • Philosophy - Visual Arts

    Maira Kalman’s “The Principles of Uncertainty”: Most Certainly a Gem

    January 21, 2024 - By 

    “If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour,” writes the visual artist and spare-time existential philosopher Maira Kalman in “The Principles of Uncertainty,” her wholly original, whimsical, disarmingly profound color-splash-of-a-book that caught my eye on a display table a few years ago in one of those small, impeccably curated bookshops in rural Maine, and which I finally got to reading this week.  What you will see and experience on that corner, she says on a previous page that sets up her suggestion above, is “The People. Everyone looks so exalted, or so…

  • Film/TV - History - Nature

    A Meditation on “Oppenheimer”

    January 13, 2024 - By 

        *** First: the primeval fear and wonder, the fact of existence itself, the gaping at the savannas, the odd and menacing creatures abounding, the vast sprawl of the stars. Noting the deep growl of hunger, the insistent urge to sample tubers, mushrooms, fruit from the trees, the slow and hapless life forms crawling beneath our gaze. The terror of being prey for stronger and faster life forms, with their shrieks and snarls and rumbles through the night. Hearing the helpless wails of our mates being devoured. The seeking for shelter and haven. The cowering. The thinking. The gathering…

  • History - Politics/Culture

    To Be Gay, Black, Brilliant
    (and Largely Unknown) in America:
    The Bayard Rustin Story

    January 7, 2024 - By 

    “The Great Man Theory of History” holds that nothing much advances in human life absent the seismic shifts created by uniquely talented, intelligent, and charismatic leaders who attract enough followers to help them enact their vision for a great cause or achievement. Whether in politics, science, business or the arts, great (wo)men serve as heroic inspirations or “Living light-fountains,” in the words of 19th century Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle, who first propagated the “Great Man Theory” in his 1840 work, “Heroes,  Hero-Worship & the Heroic in History.”  Subsequent philosophers and historians have debated the merits and applications of…