January 2021
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On one of my very very few ventures outside the US, I was in Belfast in 2018. In the middle of the city I heard a familiar riff and realized it was Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." It came from two girls busking–guitar, bass, and a drum machine. They looked like they were having the most fun…
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Front Porch Republic's magazine, Local Culture, devoted its last issue to Christopher Lasch. One of the highlights is this lengthy and excellent essay by Jeremy Beer: "Limits, Risk Aversion, and Technocracy." It explores the curious juxtaposition of license and coercion that is now such a visible feature of the leftward side of our politics, observing that…
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This has been out for some months now, and although I enjoyed the first three series a good deal, I was dreading this one a bit. The previous season had taken the Queen and her story up to the late '70s, so this one was inevitably going to deal with Charles, Diana, and Thatcher. And…
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"…fear most yourself." –Kierkegaard One slightly annoying aspect of the current state of this blog is that at least half, maybe more, of the visits to it are from people who have searched for some relatively obscure thing and gotten a link to one of my posts. Whether or not whatever they…
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An admission: I admit that I don't love Beethoven as I should. "Should" is a questionable term, I know: why should one love this or that artist? Well, in this case, he is such a giant that to feel a little standoffish from his work seems to be a fault in oneself rather than the artist.…
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As through this world I've wanderedI've seen lots of funny menSome will rob you with a six-gunAnd some with a fountain pen I've found myself thinking of that verse from Woody Guthrie's song "Pretty Boy Floyd" off and on for the past few days, since the Trump-inspired debacle of the 6th. (How sickening that it…
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…seems sadder every year. But it would be much sadder not to have one at all.
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I first read The Moviegoer sometime in the mid-1970s, and I loved it. But I was almost completely oblivious to the religious and philosophical aspects of it. I just thought it was a somewhat satirical, yet affectionate, and altogether delightful slice of a certain kind of Southern life. But that was all. After reading his…
Light On Dark Water 