Giving Thanks I am tempted to write a Thanksgiving post in the usual manner all about counting our blessings and remembering all that we have versus most other people. I sort of thread that theme through my normal writing anyway, so I am inclined to take a very different tack today. I am sitting in an office overlooking New York Harbor with all its splendor of the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge. It…
Shutting Down for the Holidays There are two times a year when everyone can be certain that nothing will get done. One is the dog days of August. When I lived in Italy fifty years ago (did I just say fifty? Wow!), if you took ill or had a toothache in the middle of August, you might just as well fly back to New York for treatment. I recall that the only emergency room…
The Gathering We are moving house across the country in less than a month from now. The actual moving van event is more like two months away, but we are leaving with the dog in tow to drive to California in twenty-three days. Driving to California sounds so Beverly Hillbillies or National Lampoon Vacation. We aren’t piling up the truck with a rocking chair. There is no planned visit to Wallyworld and not likely…
Life as an Outline In my story of several days ago I wrote of the sense of end of days as we approach yet another decade turning point. That got me thinking about the beginning of decades and what they have tended to portend. As I have reflected, I have found that there does, indeed, seem to be a pattern of optimism and new beginnings that accompany the start of a new decade. This may…
The Danger of Republics If you are a bunch of people who want to band together for common purpose, you need a few things, according to sociologists. You need a legal and economic system, in addition to a political system. I think of these as the big three, but there are certainly other cultural or social systems, but with the big three you’re off to a good start. They must also be woven together in…
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? In 1969, at the end of what seemed like a very long decade that began with great optimism and economic strength, the world was drifting into what would become the era of the stagflation of the 1970’s. We had shaken off all of our dreams of the pie-eyed sixties with Woodstock and the Apollo 11 moon landing. We were the racing dog that had caught the mechanical rabbit. We stood…
Screening Screeners You’ve heard me mention going to a list of premiers and getting the opportunity to see many of today’s greatest stars on stage. So far, we have managed to get seats in the front row for every premier we’ve attended so we feel like we’ve gotten up close and personal with Rene Zellweger, Danny Boyle, Richard Curtis, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Ray Romano, Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Tom…
Wearing Your Underwear on the Outside Yesterday, an immigrant brought to this country at a toddler with his twin brother and who has spent the past twenty years as an officer and gentleman in the U.S. Army (as has his twin brother) was maliciously and wantonly accused by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee of being a disloyal possible double agent for Ukraine. Why was this accomplished and highly decorated war veteran and…
The Righteousness of Failure I watched a screener last night that my wife gets as a member of the SAG/AFTRA Nominating Committee. It’s the movie called Dark Waters starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway and I have been seeing trailers of it lately, so I was anxious to see it. It comes nineteen years after Erin Brockovich showed the world the power of class action suits against corporate polluters. This excellent new movie has a…
Cat on a Curtain A metaphor I have enjoyed using for many years is that of a cat on a curtain. We can all envisage a scared and jittery cat jumping up to cling to a sheer curtain and digging its claws into the flimsy fabric with its unsupported draping flow. It is an image of utter fear combined with a very insecure foundation of support for the wary feline. The metaphor conjures an…