Sports Saturday
Lebron James has been taking a lot of heat recently for joining the Miami basketball team. (Did you catch the pun?) This past trading season was termed “the Lebron Sweepstakes,” and teams from around the country trekked to Cleveland to play court to “King James.” James made the occasion particularly gaudy by persuading ESPN [...]
Film Friday
Vic: What film are we talking about?
Lin: Does it matter what film?
Vic: Of course it does.
Lin: You choose then. Friday night. Not in a foreign language, ok. You don’t go to the movies to read.
[...]
Posted in 20th Century, Film, Travel | Tagged Bill Gaston, Caryl Churchill, Dr. Strangelove, Europe, Film, Good Body, Paul Quarrington, Philadelphia, Ravine, Slovenia, Travel |
Today we head home after having spent a delicious week in our Maine cottage with our sons Darien and Toby, along with our daughter-in-law Betsy and Toby’s girlfriend Candice. We immersed ourselves in memory and tradition while we were here. Portraits of my great-great grandparents John and Remember Berry Swett, are on the wall, as [...]
Since I am vacationing in Maine and spent time yesterday with my favorite cousin, who is a huge Edward Arlington Robinson fan, I devote a post to the state’s greatest poet. Whenever I visit Dan Bates in Gardiner, we have to visit Robinson’s grave and look at his house.
My favorite Robinson poem is “Eros Turannos” [...]
Sarah Palin has been recently celebrating “Mama Grizzlies”—by which I think she means “women who are so mad that they’re not going to take it anymore.” But has anyone noticed that she advocates policies that make life a lot harder for actual grizzlies?
Whether through calling for drilling in the Alaskan National Reserve, denying the [...]
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child
Imagine the following situation. A couple has been married for decades but now he has contracted a terminal illness and is dying. His wife has always prided herself on being there for him when he needed her, but now she feels helpless. Meanwhile he is scared and angry and is thrashing [...]
Gerard Houckgeest, Old Church Delft (1654)
Spiritual Sunday
Thanks to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion for alerting me to this wonderful passage from John Updike’s “Churchgoing” (which appears in Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, 1962):
There was a time when I wondered why more people did not go to church. Taken purely as a human recreation, what could [...]
Sports Saturday
This past week my novelist friend Rachel Kranz was visiting after having busted out of the World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas. She made it to Day 4 (out of 9), which was pretty good considering that she has only been playing for three years. Still she was upset, as good competitors [...]
Mel Gibson in Braveheart
Film Friday
Mel Gibson is in the news again with recorded rants against his girlfriend that are so vicious that even his ardent supporters are backing away. (You can learn about, and even listen to, the rants here but I advise caution.) I’ve never been a Gibson fan and this website ran an article critical [...]
Noh mask Shishiguchi
A psychologist, a religious studies professor, a novelist, an English professor, and two educators are in a room talking about the nature of evil. And the religious studies professor says . . .
Actually, this is not a joke but the composition of a dinner party we hosted three nights ago. One of the topics [...]
