To point out the obvious, I survived the surgery that was the subject of my last posting, and have been in a process of slow recovery over the past three and a half weeks. The surgery – a quintuple cardiac bypass, which I didn’t even know was a thing – went well, and I’m told my recovery has been as good as could be expected. I’m grateful to my surgeon and all the others who were involved in getting me…
The last week of September is, for lack of a better word, “celebrated” as Banned Books Week. And here we are, in that week, and in the wide, wonderful word of censorship. It seems things in America, and in some other countries, too, are going beyond banning books. Now we’re at the stage of banning speech we don’t agree with and, as if it’s already possible, to even banning thoughts. 1984, it seems, is coming about 33 years late. Before…
This is going to be a gripe fest. Pull up a brewski and pop open a comfortable chair and settle in for it. Some things just have to be said. Let’s start with my biggest gripe. Know what it is? You guessed it. Exclamation points. Bangs. Screamers. Shriekers. ! ! ! ! ! And lots of other names, some of which are not for utterance in polite company (we can, once more, thank the Brits for those). If I had…
I just finished watching a movie, the 1987 Suspect, starring Cher as an attorney, Dennis Quaid as a lobbyist and juror, and Liam Neeson as a deaf and dumb homeless person accused — falsely, it turns out — of murder. It’s all very 1980s, complete with the melodrama, fashions, music, over-saturated color, and earnest plot, and with Toronto standing in for an American city, in this case Washington, D.C. The movie is okay, if a bit slow-paced and low-key at…
Thank you, Jimmy Buffett, for that title. It’s June 1 in this part of the world, and here in Florida that means just one thing: It’s the first day of Hurricane Season. We mark our lives by seasons. Spring, Summer, Autumn (which some of us call Fall), and Winter. Wet and dry. High and Low. Tourist and Quiet. Hurricane Season, and the other half of the year. It’s a way of marking time, which seems (at least to me) to…