Lately I've heard a lot of people I admire very much - people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jay Lake, Matthew McConaughey (in a brilliant monologue written for him in True Detective), and an old friend of mine in New Jersey - Atheists all. Read more about The Story is Everything
Two things from last week: (1) Heard a report on the state of the film industry claiming that the domestic market for U.S. films is only 20%, and the foreign market demands 3D and CGI. (2) Saw Hobbit2 with my new understanding of why Peter Jackson turned a classic fairy tale structure into an action movie. Read more about Musings on Media
It's been about 40 years since my parents bought the Lake House.
My maternal grandparents had retired to a double-wide on land attached to the Hiawatha Beach Resort, owned and operated by members of my grandfather's family, just north of Walker, Minnesota, on Leech Lake. My mother wanted to be near them, so when my parents went looking for retirement property of their own, they found the Lake House. Read more about The Lake House
We're being inundated with a flood of facts these days. There's Politifact, the linchpin of an entire culture of political fact finders, dedicated to ferreting out the truth behind political assurances of any kind. Read more about Just the Facts
"We never eat that."
"I know. Let's get two."
Has it been two years since our last Thanksgiving shopping spree? Since the last time we stopped in front of the warm 'n' serve rolls display and decided that, you never know, somebody might want one or three. Read more about Oh! The Feasts!
I watched Casablanca again last night. There are moments in which I know I have failed as a mother. One of those moments came a couple of years ago when my daughter informed me that she had never seen Casablanca. I ordered it on the spot and designated a movie night. Sad to say, I don't think she was impressed. I don't understand why. Read more about Casablanca
Memories from old letters. Here's one from David, a boy I met at Cornell in New York, at a Luther League Convention, 54 years ago. We spent the entire weekend making out in the bushes. My, that boy could kiss.
It was a sunny day in the year 2000 when I drove down to the Federal Detention Center at Seatac to pick up my old friend Kevin. He was getting out of prison, where he had been for helping friends water pot plants. No weapons, acts of violence, or priors of any kind had been involved. There were just an awful lot of tiny little root systems in the baby beds plus a nice collection of mature plants that added up to a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. He was 40 years old when he was arrested on January 13, 1992. Read more about Kevin
I can't say I've followed Debra Winger's career very closely - I didn't even know she was an anti-fracking activist - but watching her Up Late with Alec Baldwin on MSNBC the other night, I bonded. I loved the moment when she realized she had left a green hair tie on her wrist. I empathized with her incoherent babbling - I could certainly top her at that. But she really got me when she, quite coherently, said that she only wanted to work with people who wanted to work with her. She had stopped trying to sell herself.
You've gotta sell yourself. Read more about Selling Yourself