My wife Marilyn has a thing about Anthony Bourdain. It’s not a celebrity crush, exactly. She says she wants to be him when she grows up. And who can blame her? The guy has a pretty extraordinary gig, wandering the world, exploring cultures and conflicts, with food and as a focal point and an extended cultural metaphor. The May 20 […]
The Widening Gyre, Berlin Edition
My wife Marilyn and I have spent evenings of late in the weird and wild metropolis that was Berlin in 1929. After being besieged by rave reviews from people I respect, we fired up the Netfix and dived into Babylon Berlin, the international hit German TV series. It’s supposedly the most expensive production in German history, and it […]
Peter and the Farm
At any rate, the film meets Dunning at a time when the farm is hanging on a precipice. The farm has given him three wives and four children and taken them all away. He is mostly alone with his memories, his animals, his orchard and his crops, his tractors, and his booze. And despite his impressive strength and agility, his obvious passion and admirable clarity, despite his commitment to life in the midst of a suicidal pique, it is quite clear that the entire existence of Mile Hill Farm, 134 acres of almost mythological New England, is hanging on by a thread in the intense winds of a physical, cultural, and spiritual tempest.
A Lighthouse And A Field Hospital
Recognition was a long time a‑borning. Not the recognition that something is deeply, profoundly wrong with American culture and society — and that of the West generally. That has been easy enough to perceive for, well … decades. It’s only been in the past few years that I have been forced to reckon with a hard truth: What’s broken […]
In Parenthesis: Reviewing a Masterpiece
Such was the case, recently, when after two years of intensive work, archaeologists announced the discovery of a 7000 year-old Native burial site off the coast of Florida. Or, similarly, when archaeologists revealed new theories about the workings of the ancient Roman Plutonium, where animal sacrifices were made to reinforce notions of divinity. Or in Sweden, recently, when archaeologists discovered 8000 year-old human heads impaled on spikes.
The Gorgon’s Stare
At the current pace of development and disenfranchisement of the human mind, one might be forgiven for wondering at what point a modern version of the Luddites packs a van full of explosives and attempts to drive it through the gates of Google, or Apple, or Intel.
The First Fight of Jean Moulin
Nevertheless, in an era when the word “Resistance” is bandied about rather cavalierly and, it appears, claimed by every emotional mass movement du jour, I think it’s worth thinking about what a worst-case scenario might actually look like.
