Maira 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...
View Article