It startles me to realize that I’ve lived in this little house longer than I’ve lived anyplace else. I moved around quite a bit in New York and Connecticut, yet my few years’ tenancy in each of several places there is longer in my memory than my 20 years next spring spent here.
A friend was preparing for a visit to Japan. He would be spending a few days in Osaka and wondered about things to do in Japan’s second-biggest city. I said that I’d seen that the Grand Sumo championship would be underway there during his trip. It might provide an interesting cultural experience.
Yesterday, Marvel Studios premiered a new streaming series on a fascinating character. I don’t plan to watch it. With Echo, Marvel has bowed to the inescapable dogma of HBO that a series must splatter blood or rip off clothes to be prestigious. Why would one of the most successful franchises in history shed the family-friendly tact that made it stand out in the explicit modern media landscape?
Do you like movie westerns? It is conceivable, I suppose, that you don’t. If you don’t, it is probably because you have a mistaken impression of them, and I encourage you to reconsider.
Much has been written in the last 75 years about how the U.S. gained an edge in the Pacific in World War II when the Japanese code was broken. In recent weeks it turns out I may have been trying to recreate that feat, and have begun to understand the challenges those skilled codebreakers faced.
New technology and discoveries have improved our lives in many ways, but I wonder if we’ve paid for them in the things we’ve lost. The question was raised through a bit of study disguised as entertainment — how it should be — I’ve undertaken lately. The issue is why it is that when I think of New York City, my first mental image entirely contradicts my years of living and working there.