Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: If Jesus is the answer…

By James Knudsen

“If Jesus is the answer, what was the question?”

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

I find this stately, unusual “music video” to be a beautiful version of the song featured in yesterday’s column [“You Raise Me Up,” 4:35].

Thor’s Day: On being raised up

By Vic Midyett

I’ve always felt some separation from the words of the duo Secret Garden’s song “You Raise Me Up,” whose refrain is, in Josh Groban’s version:

Ask Wednesday: Can you hear the trees for the forest?

A delight of wearing hearing instruments while shaving

By Morris Dean

“Don’t take a shower with your new hearing aids,” I was counseled. I took the counsel so seriously that I would even remove the instruments before shaving, because before shaving I had always washed not only my face and neck, but also my forehead, the back of my neck, and behind my hears. Mustn’t douse those instruments!

Tuesday Voice: Liam’s Wuff

Members of the family

Edited by William A. Johnson

[Editor’s Note: Liam’s most recent wuff appeared two weeks ago, on October 6.]

Third Monday with Bob Boldt

Vagaries (a short story)

By Bob Boldt

The photograph, by French director Chris Marker (1921-2012), was the inspiration for my short story. The image begins Marker’s 1983 documentary, Sans Soleil [Sunless]:

The first image he told me about is an image of three children on a road in Iceland in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness – and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images but it never worked. He wrote me, “One day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader. If they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.”

Sunday Review: Beasts of No Nations

A thin line between innocence and evil

By Morris Dean

We almost didn’t watch it this evening: Beasts of No Nations (2015, directed and screenplay written by Cary Joji Fukunaga). The tagline on Netflix, which bought the film’s distribution rights for $12 million, described it:

Third Saturday Fiction

Chapter 5. “Home Movies (Blue),” from The Unmaking of the President (a novel)

By W.M. Dean

[The novel is set in the 1970s of Watergate. Chapter 4. “The Game Plan,” appeared last month.]

Fish for Friday

The Exxon Mobil Refinery in Torrance, California

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

In case you haven’t seen this, the author also wrote Merchants of Doubt, a book-length version of the article: “Exxon’s Climate Concealment” [Naomi Oreskes, NY Times]. I haven’t been able to finish the book. Too depressing. The worst of it is that some apparently competent scientists became collaborators. I think that the most flagrant of the climate change deniers (those who know perfectly well they are lying) belong in prison. Excerpt:

Thor's Day: On certain diatribes against religion

What might motivate them?

By Morris Dean









We wonder whether Christopher Hitchens’
myriad anti-religion bitchings –
    as well as Harris’s and Dawkins’ –
    are complaints against the stalkings
of certain evangelizing Christians?

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean

Second Tuesday on Franklin Hill Farm: Women farmers

I am but one

By Bettina Sperry

As a woman who owns her own thoroughbred racehorse farm and raises a few head of cattle, I am always wondering how I’m doing – individually as a business and comparatively across the board. Not short of a strongly competitive nature, I look for ways to grow the farm business. How are my finances? What are my earnings per acre? How do my statistics stack against other farms? I don’t mind asking the hard questions, which include examining the farm’s efficiency and finding ways to leverage greater growth and income without necessarily creating a lot more work or putting the business at risk.

Second Monday Music: A lyrical inspiration

When a man loves a woman

By Morris Dean

Percy Sledge’s 1966 song, “When a Man Loves a Woman” has had a hold on me for weeks. The melody^* has run through my mind so much, I’m wondering whether it’s more than a coincidence that the song came out the same year I met and married the woman who has been my wife for going-on 50 years. I figured I had to write another lyric for it. This is it:

Sunday Review: British and American productions of Shakespeare

A problem

By Rolf Dumke

In “Shakespeare in Modern English?” [New York Times, October 7], James Shapiro rightly discusses a main problem in both British and American Shakespeare productions, “that even the best directors and actors...too frequently offer up Shakespeare’s plays without themselves having firm enough grasp of what his words mean.”

Second Saturday's Sonnet

Pinot

By Eric Meub

[Originally published on July 12, 2014]

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
It’s nearly bedtime, but I’m seeing shapes
Beyond the window, on a hill of grapes.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

“A New View of a Nebula Full of Newborn Stars.” [Sindya N. Bhanoo, NY Times] Excerpt:

A dazzling image of Messier 17, a reddish nebula 5,500 light-years from Earth, provides a detailed view of its newborn stars, gas clouds and dust. The gas in the nebula has a mass about 30,000 times that of the sun, astronomers estimate. The center of the nebula is home to more than 800 stars, and more are forming in the outer regions. The nebula is near the plane of the Milky Way, in the constellation Sagittarius, and is named after Charles Messier, who discovered it in 1764. The image was captured by a telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. [read more]