THOUGHTS

In this section are thoughts on whatever comes to mind, no limit on topics, written for this web site.  When I get the impulse, I’ll write thoughts and add them to what’s already here (I don’t plan on ever deleting any thoughts).  For each thought, there will be a title, length, the month and year I wrote it, a blurb on what it’s about, and a PDF of the  thought. 

To get a sense of who I am and how I see things and what's going on with me, you could read these thoughts in order beginning with "On Foucault,"  the June, 2007 thought. The thoughts are self-contained, however, and you can read them in any order.  

If the PDFs are oversize, adjust them to accommodate your reading preference.

Beginning in 2018, I'm going go put the latest thought at the top rather than at the bottom.

                   •  On the Casey Anthony Murder Case, 3 pp., May, 2020.

                   I had a good experience with a couple of true-crime books by attorneys for the prosecution and defense in the Casey Anthony murder
                   trial in 2011.  Read the complete thought here.

                   •  On Saying Goodbye to Michael Jordan, 5 pp., May, 2020.

                  I’m sitting on my leather couch watching a sports documentary called “Jordan Rides the Bus,” and about twelve minutes into it,
                  it washes over me, “What the hell am I watching this silliness for?”   Read the complete thought here.

                  • On My Box Seat, 3 pp., May, 2020.

                    I find my dreams to be lessons on what is currently going on with me.  I’ll analyze last night’s dream and the meaning I gave it as
                    a way of suggesting that you do the same kind of thing with your dreams.   Read the analysis here.

 
                • On Towards and Avoids, 3 pp, April, 2020.

                  Recently, I’ve been dividing everything in my life into two categories.  Something or someone is either a Toward or an Avoid. 
                  Read the thought here.

                 • On COVID-19 and Curtis LeMay, 4 pp., March, 2020.

               As I write this, the world is under attack from a deadly strain of coronavirus called COVID-19.  People have been         

               warned to stay in their houses or apartments hunkered down in the face of this menacing enemy.  Tonight, hunkered down,
               I read  a biography  of a World War II air force general by the name of Curtis LeMay.  It prompted me to compare LeMay
               and COVID-19 as  killing machines.  Read the complete thought here.

        
               • On Rhiannon, 7 pp., March, 2020.

               An excerpt from an email to my fifteen-year-old daughter about the Welsh mythological figure Rhiannon and a popular song that
               was written about her.  Read the excerpt here.

            • On What It's Like to Be on Death Row, 1 p., March, 2020.

              Voice-over narration from the 1967 film “On Cold Blood,” about two men, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok, sentenced to     

              death for the murder of four members of a Kansas farm family,   Read the narration here.

                •  On Getting the Word About Mookie, 3 pp., March, 2020.

              At this writing, Mookie Betts, a star outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, has been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
              An old high school friend sent a mass email to “undisclosed recipients,” which includes me, with a link to an article
              about the trade he obviously liked.  Read the complete thought here.

                 • On Movie Messages, 6 pp., February, 2020.

                 Two movies that got big media hype this past year were screenwriter and director Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a
                 Time . . . in Hollywood” and a South Korean film, “Parasite.”   I was disappointed with both.  Read my review here.

               •  On “The White Crow,” 2 pp., January, 2020.                                                                                 

               As of last night, all I knew about the film “The White Crow” was that it was about 23-year-old Russian ballet dancer Rudolf
               Nureyev’s 1961 defection to the West in a Paris airport; I hadn’t read any reviews or anything.  Read my review here.

              • On Tennessee Williams, 1 p., January, 2020.

                Lines from a Williams play and poem.  Read them here.

             • On Being Vigilant for Life’s Lessons, 4 pp., January, 2020.

              • On “What About Bob,” 3 pp., December, 2019.

            I’ve learned to go with my impulses.  Even if they don’t make sense to me when they come up, invariably later on they do.   This was
            the case with the old movie “What About Bob?”  Read the thought here.

            • On Maren Ade, 2 pp., December, 2019.

               • On Ricard Jewell, 2 pp., December, 2019.

               Richard Jewell was a security guard suspected, falsely it turned out, of setting off a bomb at the site of the 1996 Olympic Games in
              Atlanta.  At this writing, a new book has just come out about him.  Read my comments on the book here.

              • On John Simon, 2 pp., November 2019.

              I read John Simon’s obituary in The New York Times today.  Read the thought here.

              • On John Klute, 4 pp., November, 2019.

            “Klute” is a 1971 film directed by Alan J. Pakula starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.  Set in contemporary New York City, it
            tells the story of a call girl Bree Daniels (Fonda), who assists a policeman working freelance, John Klute (Sutherland), with a missing person  

            case.  Over the years, the Bree Daniels character has been analyzed in great depth and the John Klute character very little if at all.   

            Read the thought here.

              • On All We Can Do, 2 pp., November, 2019.

             “Vanya on 42nd Street” is a 1994 film directed by French director Louis Malle.  The film is a rehearsal-type performance of the classic           
             Russian play “Uncle Vonya” before a small invited audience in an abandoned theater in New York City.  The last lines of the play are spoken
             to Uncle Vanya by his niece Sonya.   Read the complete thought here.

             • On Babe Ruth’s Legs, 8 pp., November, 2019.

            
              Here are three pictures of the Yankee baseball star Babe Ruth.  Would you say that he had spindly legs?  Long, thin, frail? 
              Make a call: spindly, not spindly.   Read the complete thought here.

             • On How Life Ends Up, 2 pp., October, 2019.

            I spent the past week updating an article I wrote ten years ago with the intention of submitting it to an online magazine.   When I looked
            it over when I was done, I decided it was old news and dropped the idea.  The one thing that wasn’t old news in what I had put together was
            an introductory note about why I was doing the update.  Read the complete thought here.