• Music

    Brilliant Songs #48: Gettin’ “Happy” With Pharrell Williams

    August 31, 2024 - By 

    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…

  • Politics/Culture - Psychology

    Veep Pick Tim, Second Gent Doug & Ex-Prez Donald: Notes on Modern Masculinity

    August 24, 2024 - By 

    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…

  • Poetry

    Poetry’s Everyday Voice:
    Billy Collins’s “Picnic, Lightning”

    August 18, 2024 - By 

    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…

  • Personal Reflections

    The Peace of Graveyards…and the Tales They Tell

    August 11, 2024 - By 

    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…

  • Politics/Culture

    Can We Talk About Mike Pence for
    Just a Few More Minutes?

    August 3, 2024 - By 

    A thought experiment: You have two people seated in front of you whom you must ask to provide information that may cast them in a slightly negative light. 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…