“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
For audio version click here One day after the election I visited my brother and brother-in-law, two conservative Republicans; we loaded up handguns and a shotgun and spent two hours shooting clay birds and a target under a sky heavy with snow. Before we walked to the edge of a woods and a splintered backstop made of wooden beams, they took turns spinning two of the grandchildren inside a cardboard box. One child stepped into […]
read more
For audio version click here At the end of 1951’s The Thing *, a reporter, cured of his cynicism, phones in his story from the Artic. He has a doozy – a small group of Americans, isolated from rescue, have destroyed a ‘thing’, an alien killer. The reporter issues a warning to his readers and to the audience: “Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.” He is warning of an alien invasion – watch […]
read more
For audio version click here Love appears, like some kind of Genesis event, out of nothing. We do not choose those with whom we fall in love. I do not know precisely how it begins to happen, but there is always some style in the catalyst – the sympathy of another’s eyes, the saunter or stride of a walk, a pleasing laugh, an insightful remark. Then we cartwheel into our affection for them, our chemistry goes […]
read more
For audio version click here How does one come to a comprehensive understanding of mysterious Ahab, a man dismembered, besieged by blasphemous insights, a prisoner of his own self-imposed solitude, a living force isolated by a brilliant mind focused on the annihilation of a “great, gliding demon?” Contemptuous of all dogmas and fearless, he believes that “the right worship is defiance (725).”* Once begun, there can be no turning back – his pride will be […]
read more
