July 2012
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What else can you call a man who has put 3,000,000 miles on his car? Especially if the car is a 1966 Volvo P1800, which I consider to be a candidate for the title of Most Beautiful Car Ever Made. I have a Volvo, too, but in general I'm not one of those people who…
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The Quiet American This is about both the movie and the Graham Green novel. A few weeks ago the movie was shown on one of the cable channels that broadcasts movies uninterrupted (it wasn't TCM, so it must have been Sundance). On an impulse of curiosity I recorded it. I had read the novel some…
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Well, not exactly. But it's strange: much of the country is enduring a crushing heat wave, while down here almost in the tropics we're having a more pleasant than usual summer. So far, anyway–I don't expect it to last. Roughly the northwest quadrant of the country has been having temperatures in the range of 100F/38C…
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Nobody knew better than Christ that people to whom everday things like holding a job or interacting with another human being are never-ending sources of torture and anxiety are exactly the ones most in need of healing. A guy who hung out with lepers, paralytics, the possessed: this is someone I can trust. We don't…
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Weekend Music Continuing with the old top-40 love songs: the lyrics of this one make it a weeper like the last two, but the music tells another story altogether. What a great singer he was. And I guess we better have this, too.
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I'm referring to the 1962 movie starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. We watched it last night, mainly because it's been sitting here (from Netflix) for a couple of weeks, and we felt like watching a movie. It was not particularly Independence-Day-appropriate. I've wanted to see it for a long time, but I'm not sure…
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As anyone who knows me is aware, I don't really need a reason to be melancholy. But I have one today. In spite of its many defects, much too well known to need mentioning, I really love this country, and its future is very much in doubt. Those who refer to it as "the American…
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Gender Studies I was away from Friday afternoon till Monday night and didn't have time for writing. And I have to admit straightaway that it's cheating a bit to call this a Sunday Night Journal, because the pictures below were taken Monday morning. But I don't want to leave a gap in the SNJ series,…
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The news is not unlike the storm, breeding a mood, feeding anxiety, promising the worst and then rolling off into some kind of electronic distance before hammering us. I attempt to bring some balance to my despair of it with such rationalizations as 'Had it been possible in 1599 or just 99 to report what…
Light On Dark Water 