Historians hail Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press circa 1440 as a seminal shift in human civilization, and so it has been. It would take another nearly four centuries, until 1826, before Nicéphore Niépce captured “View from the Window at Le Gras” via a “heliotrope” process that has been immortalized as the world’s first photograph. Parlor game enthusiasts might argue these centuries later about whether Niépce’s picture was worth more or less than any proverbial thousand words set to type by Gutenberg. But what we have learned as we creep up on the 200th anniversary of Niépce’s accomplishment is that…
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A hound bounds through the wet grass as I walk the park across from my house. It cuts sharply left, then right like a fleet NFL running back. Seeming to think momentarily of drawing even with its mistress running maybe 30 yards ahead with leash in hand, it instead brakes suddenly, with great force, and sets to turning in tight circles, one, two, three revolutions or more, a veritable dervish. Then it launches into a vertical jump, at the bottom of which it bursts forth into a mad sprint that overtakes its mistress at last. Onwards it goes, resuming its…
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We Americans are suckers for buddy road trips. Two young-ish guys, a guy and a gal, two gals, it matters not. Fill up a suitcase, an ice chest and the gas tank, take the top down if you can, plop into the car, and tool on down the highway, stopping where and when you please, keeping the trigger finger in your brain always cocked for adventure. It’s a vast and gorgeous country, after all, and most of the people in it are right nice when you get out and meet them face to face. Road trips are a fine way…
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There’s a scene some 40 minutes into Netflix’s stirring documentary on musician/composer Jon Batiste when his adult self is back on the piano bench with his long ago teacher from Juilliard School of Music, working on Beethoven’s “Appassionata” sonata. Batiste starts in and his teacher brings him up short within seconds, even grabbing his hand off the piano as he sternly implores, “You have to breathe; you are not breathing!” The teacher demonstrates, Batiste tries again, the teacher stops him again and says, “If you don’t breathe, it’s like a computer, it doesn’t express anything. You want life. Breathe!” In…
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So much suffering. Catastrophe upon catastrophe, really, the long chronicle of humanity’s vast inhumanity and indifference to our fellow humans a kind of psychosis draped in the flags of country, religion, revolution, and perhaps the most fundamental, reptilian attachment of all: greed. We want to look away, of course, the poet having long ago told us we “cannot bear very much reality.” In truth, it is natural, and human, and necessary, to carry on so the world’s accumulated misery does not plunder our own capacity for the joy and love and yes, frivolity and ease that should also be everyone’s…