I grew up in a house without books and now one of my standing jokes to visitors who gape at the library-like appearance of my home is that the main motif of my decorating scheme is books. I’ve never counted them, but I just now did a mental inventory, estimating seventeen six-level standing bookshelves throughout …
Call me perverse (and you’re probably right), but I’m sitting here feeling nostalgic for the fifties, thanks to George Clooney’s new film about pioneering TV reporter Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck. If you haven’t already seen it, I urge you to see it now. Here are some of the things that induced …
I’m in Seattle visiting with friends for the High Holy Days. When I lived here a few years ago, I was deeply involved in a spiritual community that had suffered a deep loss, then spiralled into conflict. I had heard that recently, healing was becoming evident. So part of my reason to visit was this: …
The time of the new year is drawing close: Rosh HaShanah begins Monday evening. The process of preparation tests us. For the whole previous month, we dive into the river of time, poking under rocks and peering into dark places, making our soul inventory. Our missteps and misdeeds float to the surface, demanding to be …
Things are hard, so I am in the mood for sad, beautiful music. Happily, providence has sent me some. I have been listening obsessively to I Am A Bird Now, the latest from Antony and The Johnsons. Antony Hegarty’s music is a genre- (and gender-) bending amalgam of art song, doo-wop and gospel, all layered …
I hate TV commercials, so when I want to watch a program, I usually tape it so as to fast-forward through the ads. Consequently, I’m a little behind in my viewing. There’s a tall stack of gray videotapes by the VCR, each with its little cache of programs I mean to watch as soon as …
\The Self-Made Man\, a new film by my friend Susan Stern, will have its television premiere on the PBS series “P.O.V.” this coming week (and while I’m boasting about my friends, let me say that “P.O.V.” was created by another friend of mine, the prodigiously talented Marc Weiss). Most stations will air it on July …
If you didn’t know I was a baby-boomer, it would surely become evident in my tendency to find timeless wisdom in the lyrics of pop songs. My new car has a CD player, which I immediately loaded up with personal favorites. Van Morrison’s 1968 \Astral Weeks\ is my desert-island recording: I got it as a …
Something is happening that raises my spirits: ultra-respectable liberal commentators — folks no one can reasonably dismiss as wild-eyed radicals (such as Elizabeth Drew, whom I wrote about on July 5th) — are standing up and speaking truth to power in a forthright fashion that knocks me off my feet. Latest case in point is …
My name is Arlene, and I’m a hypocrite. Remember on April 29th, when I wrote about how the “peak oil” documentary The End of Suburbia, when I wrote about my determination to put up with the inconvenience of a one-car family so as to minimize my complicity with Big Oil? Well, the shelf-life of that …