Freedom, Fanaticism, Retrenchment: John Brown and the Southern Baptist...
Two events drew my attention and stood in severe contrast last week. One was coming across the 2020 Showtime mini-series, “The Good Lord Bird,” about pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown and his...
View ArticleA Pastor Grapples With Faith and the Future: Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”
A young eco-activist confronts the massive evidence of humankind’s abuse of the earth, and he spirals downward in a doom loop of despair. The new life growing in his wife’s belly offers no solace....
View ArticleBreak the Record, Die Trying? Free Diving With Laura McGann’s “The Deepest...
In the long summer months—which in the generally sunny climes where I have lived I regard as May through at least September—I have long made a habit of swimming in as many backyard and club pools as...
View ArticleA Meditation on “Oppenheimer”
*** First: the primeval fear and wonder, the fact of existence itself, the gaping at the savannas, the odd and menacing creatures abounding, the vast sprawl of the stars. Noting the deep growl of...
View ArticleMaira Kalman’s “The Principles of Uncertainty”: Most Certainly a Gem
“If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour,” writes the visual artist and spare-time existential philosopher Maira Kalman in “The Principles of Uncertainty,” her wholly...
View ArticleWhy I Quit Watching “The Sopranos”
When my daughter was four or five years old, we took her to a highly touted “children’s movie” animation having to do with the escapades of a pony finding its way through fraught circumstances. I...
View ArticlePhotojournalist James Nachtwey: Pictures Worth All the Views a Heart Can Bear
So much suffering. Catastrophe upon catastrophe, really, the long chronicle of humanity’s vast inhumanity and indifference to our fellow humans a kind of psychosis draped in the flags of country,...
View ArticleJon Batiste Learns to Breathe in Monumental “American Symphony”
There’s a scene some 40 minutes into Netflix’s stirring documentary on musician/composer Jon Batiste when his adult self is back on the piano bench with his long ago teacher from Juilliard School of...
View Article“Will & Harper”& the Long Road of “Transitioning” To a True Self
We Americans are suckers for buddy road trips. Two young-ish guys, a guy and a gal, two gals, it matters not. Fill up a suitcase, an ice chest and the gas tank, take the top down if you can, plop into...
View ArticleTo That Bounding, Swirling Dog in the Park, and Leonardo da Vinci, and My...
A hound bounds through the wet grass as I walk the park across from my house. It cuts sharply left, then right like a fleet NFL running back. Seeming to think momentarily of drawing even with its...
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