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It was the coldest of times, it was the hottest of times… …okay, so in this cute little invocation of Dickens, I may be exaggerating about the heat. But about the cold? It was no laughing matter. February 2021 hit Texas like a ton of frozen bricks. Wind turbines couldn’t spin, solar panels underperformed, natural gas flows were disrupted, power went out, and many died. The heat came in fast […]

What Are You Talking About?

Who We Need to Be
When an online discussion of energy reliability went wrong, I realized it was caused by hidden, incompatible frames of reference. Without realizing, we were using the same words to talk about very different things. Look out for mismatched frames, and don't let them ruin your conversations and relationships — or your understanding of God.
I have long had mixed feelings about songs that celebrate my country, and so here I offer alternate lyrics to USA’s national anthem. Although still quite rough, I could wait no longer; I wanted to share it now, on USA’s Independence Day. Here’s the thing: The songs I know are all laud and glory, yet over USA’s gestation and lifetime, there have most certainly been numerous cases in which our […]

Back Side Star-Spangled Banner

Diversity & Exclusion
I have long had mixed feelings about songs that celebrate this country I love, and so here I offer alternate lyrics to USA's national anthem. The USA story is not all laud and glory, but neither is it disdainful at the level some shout and spout. USA's reality is a complicated mix of these two extremes.
I have not been to our old spot since you went away. I trust what you said, that you will come back, but by now it feels like the waters flow without me. I know you get the notes I send to you, but I wish it were possible for you to reply. I remember the things you told me, but I long to again hear your voice. Or maybe […]

We Will Meet Again #1

Digital Art
Welcome to the Brazilian rain forest. This is a digital art piece based in photography, paired with a short bit of prose.
You said you would be back, and I long for it. So I wait. They said you would come in the same way as you came before. So I wait here, where people arrive from the air. You could not say, did not know, when you would return. So I wait long hours that blend one into another. Days. Years. I am learning to wait. And watch. I watch the […]

I Am Waiting #1

Digital Art
Beside an airport, over a lake, I long for a return. And I wait. And I watch the light. This is a digital art piece based in photography, paired with a short bit of prose.
The street, loud with traffic and wind, was respite to Isak, the noise proceeding through his blond skull, rattling from his mind the fading echoes of the coldness of his girlfriend’s parting words. The gray sidewalk passed steadily beneath his feet, growing darker until the street lights came on, then a bit lighter and brown. Rarely did his eyes rise from that surface. I should head off any assumption that […]

Up I See Colors

Flash Fiction
[revised] Isak wanders in central Stockholm, the noise chasing away unwanted echoes in his mind.
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How the film enriched and changed me Hirokazu Kore-eda’s intimate observation and deliberate pacing in After Life draw me beyond its central notion (choosing a single memory from one’s life) and into a longing to be more often fully present in all the moments in my life. I want to be more fully alive and aware so I might see and feel the significance of each moment and every memory. […]

After Life: Finding Life Before Death

After Viewing Film Analysis
Seeing the film After Life, I want to be more fully present for and more deeply experience each moment. I want to be more deliberate about how I find meaning and significance, grounding it in community and camaraderie with the people around me, both momentary relationships and lasting ones.
As the spite and malice of the gathered crowd rose, my certainty in being there fell. What am I standing for. What does my presence say. How does this fix anything. I should go. I don’t question the cause…the reason I came. There my confidence is unshaken. Wrong is wrong. The world must change. It’s here. Me being here, part of this increasingly raucous, pulsing, boiling, thundering crowd. What am […]

Tilda’s Brick

Flash Fiction
As the spite and malice of the gathered crowd rose, my certainty in being there fell. What am I standing for. How does this fix anything. This is not even my city.
Crossing Red Square, I heard two women, clearly mothers, agree that they wanted their children to be happy. The fathers, apparently, wanted the children to be high achievers and that would be fine, said the mothers, so long as. Just then, I tripped over nothing. This would not have been unusual except that spirits don’t trip. The mothers didn’t realize I had bumped into them. They were concerned, the mothers. […]

Mother of Russia

Short Story
Crossing Moscow's Red Square, a wandering mother longs to know about the happiness of a son she has not seen for decades. She listens to others, observes the Square, and seeks to find him.
Gabriela’s uncle unknowingly told her the precise night and time she could arrive. Hers was a journey of seeing — her eyes and her camera, her transport. Back at ten, working alongside mamá, she barely felt the pain of the knife. She was captivated by the deep red, and yet also its brightness, that came from her finger. “Es la vida,” mamá said, covering the flow with a kitchen rag. […]

The Day and Time

Flash Fiction
A young girl's heart is captured by the notion that blood is life flowing.
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“I do it myself!” I was taken aback at my little Mary’s forceful demand, so long ago, to tie her own shoes. I was not surprised, really — I had heard similar protests from others’ children — but her intensity caught me out. What had she to worry? I was the grand and great parent: the one who watches over all my wee bairns. All will go right with all […]

Every Little Detail

Flash Fiction
Little Mary's "I do it myself" — a cry for independence and freedom — caught me out. I withdrew, grinning at the image of myself as Kim Jong-il.
The Beatles, for their part, lasted three years after saying “all you need is love.” For us it was only two. “What’s next? The art museum or the ice cream shop?” It was a typical choice we’d pose to ourselves, walking the town of a Saturday. “As you wish,” the other would reply. Or, “Where shall we live? Uptown or East End?” “Vacation in Jamaica or Rome?” Whatever the question, […]

You’re Wrong About Love

Flash Fiction
The Beatles, for their part, lasted three years after saying "all you need is love." For us it was only two. This possibility was not in our minds as we walked the town on a Saturday.
I awoke to unusual shadows flitting across the ceiling. Heads and arms. A baseball bat. I grabbed the phone. 911. No signal. Nothing. Dead. As I would soon be. The shadows changed to scratching at the wall. Then clawing at the door. Someone wanted in. Or something. This mountain cabin was a bad idea. In the wild, I thought, I can write. Discover reality. Achieve my dream. Ha. Who am […]

You Can Do It (or Maybe Not)

Flash Fiction
I awoke to unusual shadows flitting across the ceiling. Heads and arms. A baseball bat. I grabbed the phone. 911. No signal. Nothing. Dead. As I would soon be.
Why the film is worth your time If religion is a poison (as Hitchens would have it), Godspell is an antidote. Playfully serious, musically excellent, and rich in spirit, the film romps through New York City exploring and embodying wisdom from the Bible’s Gospel According to Matthew. If that already puts you off, stick with me a minute before you decide against it, because the film is a lot of […]

Watch This: Godspell

Before Viewing Film Guide
In 1970s New York City, eight twenty-somethings are shoved, yelled at, and indoctrinated by force into the city's fast-paced, me-first grind. A colorfully and curiously dressed man calls them together at Bethesda Fountain, where they play in the water and go romping, teaching, singing, and living life to the full.
Here’s a riff on an old expression: If I claim to make a speech in the middle of a forest with no one else around, is it really a speech? At dictionary.com (i.e., Random House), there’s this: So yes. I uttered it, I declared it, it was speech. Only the question isn’t, “Is it speech?” I’m asking, “Is it a speech?” Back to the definition: So it wasn’t. There was […]

The God Who Does Not Exist

Why We Believe What
If I give a speech alone in a forest, is it really a speech? Definitions, implied or explicit, matter with important questions, silently forming how we think and when we go awry.
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A burst of thunder and a storm open David Lowery’s narrative short, Pioneer — that, and a nightmare. The bed lamp flicks on. A father takes his young son into a gentle embrace. What does the son need to soothe the nightmare? Not water, he wants a story. A favorite children’s book? No, the nightmare’s antidote is an epic story the father has told before…one of search, and rescue, and […]

Lowery’s Pioneer and the Artist as Guide

Short Film
David Lowrey's superb filmcraft imbues a father-son moment with power and grace.
Context and summary Toward the end of February, 2021, a major US-national media entity published a short interview of a US senator (fewer than 1500 words). Interviews can be news done well, and there were good parts of the interview in question, yet it stumbled into three major errors that fail as news: The interviewer, whom I’ll refer to as J, failed to take the interview where J — and even […]

Real Fake News, No. 1

Public Discourse
As one style of Real Fake News, "use the interviewee as a prop" offers several ways for media folk to make it seem the interviewee is saying things that they're not, to push an agenda, and to avoid real issues by introducing off-topic, vague, and sensational content. Here we break down a recent media report.
Why the film is worth your time Imaginative, compassionate, and perceptive, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life creates a crucible of sorts to distill a person’s life down to its essence — specifically as the person identifies, in hindsight, the most significant event in their life. The film puts 20 or more characters in its crucible, exploring a kaleidoscopic landscape of lives and memories. After Life is very much worth the time, […]

Watch This: After Life

Before Viewing Film Guide
After Life movie poster: Five Asians stand on plain dirt ground with a cloudy sky of blue in the background.
After Life creates a crucible of sorts to distill a person’s life down to its essence — what was the most significant event in their life? The film puts 20 or more characters in its crucible, exploring a kaleidoscopic landscape of lives and memories.
“This is the time to heal in America,” Joe Biden said in his election victory speech. I thought it was an obvious sort of “who could disagree with that?” kind of statement, but it was fawned over by commentators nonetheless. (Actually, there are some that might well disagree about healing because they think the USA needs a cultural revolution of a sort, but that’s a conversation for another day.) He […]

Post-Election Healing: Get Your Heart Transplant Now

Public Discourse
National healing requires much more than vague ideas to "be nice." The depth of pain caused by both sides demands a greater weight of action for relational reconciliation. Here are ideas for how to start, based on the principles behind Truth and Reconciliation commissions.
I must open this piece by clarifying three things off the top: I agree that strict measures were needed in an attempt to stem the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Further, action or not, there are many intricate concerns about how to equitably distribute the pain of the pandemic. Even more, there are deeply difficult questions about how alternative courses of action may trade off lives lost to coronavirus against […]

De-Weapon­izing “Prepared by Science”

Society & Politics
The image is a tweet dated 23 Mar 2020 @ 4:11am. The tweeter is blurred and the text is cropped and partially blurred. What we can see reads: "Good morning, Texas...prepared by science...move as a state from...#StaySafeStayHome...430,000 deaths"
If good science supports it, indeed we should believe it. But weaponized appeals to authority don't make for good science or healthy society.
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Science, when sincere, principled, and dispassionate, is a beautiful tool. And it’s beautiful whether the conclusions are right or wrong; that’s part of the process. But how science is used in political discourse can turn it ugly. A little while back, I wrote about a politician’s fallacious appeal to science while advocating a particular COVID-19 response. In a tweet, the politician did what I call “playing the science card” — […]

They said “Science” — Did You Not Hear That?

Society & Politics
Science is a beautiful tool, but well-meaning societal concern does not justify political advocacy masquerading as science.