Book reviews, movie reviews, reflections on published articles, and the like
Predictably, I got around to watching Hulu’s The Bear right before it piled up a stack of Emmys. I’m still a season behind, but I want to begin this post by saying that Season 1 Episode 7 is brilliant and unique. You should see it if you haven’t already. No Read more…
Perhaps like you, the eventful year of 2020 led me to do several unusual things. One was to rebuild this blog. Another was to attend my first protest since a bright, cold Manhattan afternoon, eighteen years earlier, devoted to speaking out against George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq. Read more…
It is nearly Halloween. But I have been thinking of the photograph below since the long, heady days of early summer, when I captured it on a bike errand to deliver paperwork to my son’s school. The nature of the paperwork has already slipped my mind. But the image of Read more…
“It’s not my Seattle anymore” My wife’s dear auntie, a lifelong Seattleite, mostly “It looks like one of those matchboxes sold already” Woman talking to her boyfriend on the street, Fremont District, June 2022 I’ve come to realize that I have a perhaps unique perspective on my natal city. I Read more…
I’ve been sitting for a while with Bryce Covert’s July 20 New York Times Guest Essay “8 Hours a Day, 5 Days a Week is Not Working for Us.” The piece makes an affirmative case that Americans ought to spend less time on the job. It struck a chord with Read more…
I’ve been thinking about pools this sunny California March. One reason is that I’ve decided to plunk myself back in the chlorinated waters of the slow lane at master’s swim. But the bigger reason is that I’ve been reading Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and Read more…
In December the California Department of Finance announced in this press release that the state grew more slowly in percentage terms than at any time since 1900. Yes, that’s 1900, not 1990. The July to July growth rate was 0.05 percent, down from 0.23 percent the previous year, also a Read more…