Category Archives: art and humor

This quarter in Granta, a literary magazine which unfortunately makes little of its content available on-line, is a tremendous memoir chapter by Jeremy Seabrook. It’s about his Aunt Em, a kind and vivacious woman whose ability to make friends and have fun was quashed by his cold mother. This might sound like a small matter–oneContinue reading “Things Can’t Go On Like This, Yet They Must”

David Oates has an idea. A new poem, from this quarter’s issue of ISLE:         Nature poem nature detailnature detailfeelingnature detail scene setting        [beginners: do this first]nature detailfeelingfeelingnature detailpoignant feeling civilization detailbad feelingnature detailthreatened feelingnature detailreassured feeling  [advanced: ironic, or, even morethreatened]

Some people–the brilliant few–do not let a lack of means prevent them from making true art. The late Michangelo Antonioni was one of those few. His movies are fascinating, exasperating, mysterious, but never cliched. For the environmentally minded, his Red Desert–featuring the beautiful Monica Vitti in an industrial wasteland, is not to be missed. RestContinue reading “Thinking of Red Desert”

Hot townSummer in the cityback of my neckgetting dirty and gritty…

From the Union of Concerned Scientists’ editorial cartoon "Science Idol" cartoon contest. More contestants here. (And much more serious reporting, on their climate change report for the Northeast, when I catch up.) But for now:

"…Vox Populi, Vox Dei translates as: My God! How did we get in this  mess!" Methinks Robert Heinlein, who is not entirely enthralled with democracy, has a point. From "Glory Road," chapter seventeen.

The incandescent Joel Achenbach sums up the final installment of the potent-but-depressing Washington Post series on "the Dark Lord" of D.C., Dick Cheney: That Dick Cheney: He’s not exactly John Muir. Not exactly Henry David Thoreau. The final installment of the Gellman/Becker series shows us a man who loves the smell of rotting salmon inContinue reading “Dick Cheney: He’s Not Exactly John Muir”

From McClatchey’s cartoonist Kevin Siers:

Lines to remember, and savor: I hope I make sense to you in the shimmerof our days while the world we  cling to in common is burning. From one of the greatest of today’s poet’s, W.S. Merwin. HT: reviewer M. Wynn Thomas, for The Guardian.