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 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.
“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.
• On
Jimmy Rayl, 3 pp., September, 2019.
I recently thought about an incident involving a former
Indiana basketball player by the name of Jimmy Rayl,
both as he was then and
as he is now (or was,he just
died) Read
the thought here.
• On Sandy Duncan’s Ears, 3 pp., September, 2019.
Sandy Duncan is old now, 73, but
at one time she was really big in the entertainment
field.Read
the thought here.
• On Dying, 5 pp., August, 2019.
I read a book that helped me clarify the difference
between death and dying. Read the thought here.
• On
Being Really Old, 4 pp., August, 2019.
I read a book and saw a film on old age I’d like you to
know about.Read
the thought here.
• On “Detour,” Et al., 8 pp., July, 2019.
Three days ago, I streamed the 1945 film “Detour.”The most
thought-provoking film I’ve seen in my memory.Read the full
thought here.
•
On the Death of James Whale
Revisited, 10 pp., June, 2019.
Out of nowhere it seemed, this week I felt a strong
desire to see the 1998 film “Gods and Monsters,” which I
had seen
before,
eleven years ago.Read
the complete thought here.
•On
Arthur Godfrey and Haleloke, 6 pp., May, 2019.
When I was twelve or so, I watched Arthur Godfrey and Haleloke on television.Read the
complete thought here.
•On Growing Up Well, 3 pp.,
April, 2019.
Dear Dee— A big part of growing up is finding out what
you are good at and like to do.
Read the email portion here.
•On Getting Our Needs Met,
6 pp., April, 2019.
This week,
I’ve been perusing a book about the French-born
intellectual René Girard (1923-2015). Reading the
book has
prompted me to recall a book I read a
year ago, What
Day is Today?The
Story of My Life in the Minor Leagues, and to
reflect
on how we go about satisfying our
needs.Read
the thought here.
•
On Mindfulness. 2pp.,
March, 2019.
I don’t know if it’s the biggest choice we make in our
lives, but a crucially important choice is to be happy.Read the
complete thought here.
• On a Role Model for Dee, 5 pp., March, 2019.
My daughter Dee is fourteen now, a freshman in high
school. Like
every parent, I think about who in Dee’s world she can
look up
to and emulate.It was
reassuring this past week to find just such a person:the singer
Miley Cyrus.Read the thought here.
• On Kurt Vonnegut, 4pp,,March,
2019.
About a week ago, I looked through the biography
and autobiography section of my local library’s e-book
collection, and a book of letters
by the writer
Kurt Vonnegut caught my eye.Read the
complete thought here,
• On Jean Arthur, 4pp., February, 2019.
This week, I read a biography of the
old-time movie actress (she did some stage work after
her movie career ended) Jean Arthur (1900-1990)
that has
stuck with me. Read
the thought here.
• On “Lyle
Mitchell,” 6pp., February, 2019
I was taken
with “Escape at Dannemora,” a seven-part series on
SHOWTIME which aired in November and December of 2018
and I binge
watched in January, 2019.“Escape at
Dannemora” is based on the breakout from a prison in
up-state New York by two life-sentence murderers.
They were abetted in
their escape, as well as sexually serviced, by a prison
employee, Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell.The focus here
is on the
relationship between Tilly and
her husband Lyle.Read the thought here.
• On Getting Better at Golf (and
Other Things Too), 4 pp., January, 2019.
My
fourteen-year-old
daughter Dee, as I call her in public expressions, lives
in another state with her mother.Dee is very
involved with golf
and shoots in the mid-70s and hopes
to play on her high school team and in college.During the
2018 Christmas break from school, she and
her mother traveled to Arizona to
compete in a junior golf tournament.Dee wrote me a
long email just after she returned from the Arizona
trip.She
reported that she didn’t do well in the tournament.A visit to the
Grand Canyon (including the rental Mercedes to get
there)
was a great time.With a bit of
editing, this was my emailed reply to Dee’s message.Read the email
here.
•
On the Interminable Ending of Basketball Games, 4 pp.,
December, 2018.
I’m a regular reader of Phil Mushnick’s sports columns
in The New York Post online.I find him a
breath of fresh air amid all the cheerleading and
inanity
that passes for sports
commentary in our time.Read the thought here.
