Drowning in the Mainstream In the classic 1951 movie A Place in the Sun, Montgomery Clift rows out in a boat on Lake Tahoe (the reality versus the Adirondacks it was supposed to represent) and he has with him his knocked-up girlfriend played by Shelly Winters. He is vexed as a poor boy by the desire to make it big and snag the rich girl (Liz Taylor), to have his place in the sun,…
The End of Democracy I love the news summaries that major news publishers now put online. They are the ultimate headline approach to reading in that if the story grabs you (that’s the point of headlines and why I spend so much time coming up with snappy titles for my stories), you then just click through to the one or more URL links in the headline and off you go with the next level…
Never Give Up NBC Sunday Today had a Sheryl Crow interview and discussed her career and life choices. She went from being a normal midwestern girl raised in a middle class lifestyle and choosing a normal school-teaching career, to being a Michael Jackson protege that launched her first platinum album in 1993. Somewhere along the golden path of Hollywood music success, Crow moved to Nashville and adopted some children so she could get back to…
Dying Too Soon Today my youngest son and I went to go see a movie that had a lousy Rotten Tomatoes score of 43. I was skeptical of the score since the fan rating was 79 and it starred Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup and Michelle Williams. The movie was After the Wedding. It’s the story of a successful entrepreneurial woman (Moore) and her sculptor husband (Crudup) who wants to make a large charitable gift to…
The Enemy of the People Just when you thought Sharpiegate was dying down, we have two or three new scandals being uncovered that our beloved President Donald Trump seems to be perpetrating. These are not conspiracies being reported by left wing radical news blogs (like this one), these are stories posted by Politico and the Washington Post. There is so much to discuss, I almost don’t know where to start. We are all…
A Big Girl’s Blouse I am thoroughly enjoying the shenanigans in the House of Commons. I can barely recall a U.S. news day with as much Parliamentary proceedings making the news as today. Then again, three lost votes (the first three votes) for a new Prime Minister sets Boris Johnson in the record books as the most controversial PM in the history of England. No one has ever lost a first, much less a…
A Bridge Over Troubled Waters In the Spring of 1972, I had successfully negotiated my freshman year at Cornell. That year had been eventful in that I had transferred from the Engineering School to the College of Arts and Sciences. I had pulled that off on my own since my mother’s approach to child rearing was that you were on your own at seventeen once in college. No one challenged me on the move…
Stiffening The world is stiffening and becoming less flexible. One of my favorite old New Yorker Cartoons shows a Viking pushing up against a tree with the caption, “Even the Vikings had to stretch.” Obviously, what was intended was to take the ruthless and blindly ambitious Viking way of life (thought to be all about pillaging lesser and more sedate communities within their reach) and suggesting that no one can be continuously aggressive without…
When it’s Time This morning I have a mild headache brought on, most likely, by a stiff neck. Maybe it was from sleeping too long (I had a catch-up eight hours last night) or maybe it’s from driving a total of six hours yesterday with one full hour being in a blinding downpour. Then again, I played golf on Saturday for the first time in two years, and while the lower back stiffness has…
Indian Giving One of my favorite possessions is a stone and copper outdoor statue of a reclining Socrates. This is a life-sized Socrates, who’s draped toga is a rough field stone that is shaped just so, to look like a reclined flowing robe. Nature crafted it thus and caught the eye of the artist. The artist attached a head, arms and feet made of copper and adding the element of realism to the subtle…