Sometimes it seems as if the universe is warning us against something. Or, perhaps, it is just measuring our determination. Testing us. In “The Once and Future King,” the fine telling of the Arthurian legend that set to music became “Camelot,” T. H. White offered the parable that sometimes bad things happen to keep worse things from happening.
Over the last few years, as frequent readers here know, I’ve taken interest in the lovely, even cute, Japanese culture.
I can remember Mandy Patinkin in various movies of the week on broadcast TV when I was small. Let me say that I definitely grew up with his work, and if it could be said that I love him in a real way, I do.
If the art form known as anime received the attention and credit it deserves, you would already have heard of a series called “The Holy Grail of Eris,” or in romaji Japanese, Erisu no Seihai.
I watched it Tuesday night, all 12 25-minute episodes. It is a masterpiece.
My internet is reliable. Reliable at going down at 7 p.m. every Monday night for years. That’s unfortunate given that I preach a livestreamed sermon every week at that time.
A Farewell To Arms is about as positive as Hemingway is going to get. Frederic Henry is the American protagonist wounded while serving as an ambulance driver. A lieutenant in the Italian army, he lets us see World War I through his eyes.
The mood in the CBS Radio Networks newsroom was grim, depressing, and tense.
There had recently been buyouts, with longtime employees being offered cash and benefits to . . . leave. Many, including longtime employees who didn’t accept the buyouts (or ones who for some reason weren’t offered them), were laid off, never to return.
I actually read this novella a few years back, in preparation for teaching it to my ninth grade students. I have an Audible version, narrated by the great Donald Sutherland, may he rest in peace.
You might have heard of an article published by Reuters late last week in which after extensive research and what I guess they’d call shoe-leather detective work they identified the famous British stencil-graffiti artist known as “Banksy.”
If there is anything as embarrassing as confessing one’s sins it has to be confessing one’s stupidities.
Yet here we are. Instead of describing how well my cool new Starlink-based phone-internet setup is coming together, I’m obligated to detail how I fell for a swindle so obvious that there’s no escaping the fact that my mind must have got disengaged for a while.