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Books • Songs • Poems • Religions • Politics • Random Musings

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1. Song & a Film, With Chaser: “Lux Aeterna” & “Requiem for a Dream”
   Sep 26, 2026 · original
   I have no idea anymore how I came across Clint Mansell’s chilling musical composition, “Lux Aeterna.” Literally translated as “eternal light,” the words are from the ending prayer of the Latin mass for the dead, beseeching God to be merciful in shining light and love on the departed for all eternity. One link or comment or other lure begets another, and whatever I was initially looking for was subsumed a few notes into the Kronos Quartet’s performance (see below). Mansell engaged the renowned group to serve as the musical interpreters of his friend Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream,” a 2000 film that deals in frantic, quick-cutting, hyper-realistic fashion with the wages of both drug addiction and the death of the American Dream. Burstyn goes to pieces before our eyes, a portrait of bottomless loneliness and yearning for some measure of validation that she matters, and in her words
2. Eight Wondrous Excerpts From “A Sense of Wonder” (Illustrated)
   Sep 18, 2026 · original
   One of the wonderful things about essay collections is you don’t have to keep going. It’s a breeze to read an essay at a time, spaced a day or a week or at whatever interval you please, no need to keep a narrative thread in your head as you would, say, were you trying to read “War and Peace” BECAUSE YOU SHOULD, but then you get waylaid for a week because your basement floods or you took a vacation that didn’t turn out to really be one, and when you return to the tale you can no longer distinguish between Denisov, Kutuzov, and Bezukhov, so you have to start over for the 33rd time in a life that you can’t help but notice is growing shorter by the day while the book refuses to do the same. The 37 selections in Brian Doyle’s 2016 collection, “A Sense of Wonder,” require only 179 pages, which my calculator tells me comes to 4.84 pages each. Some are a bit longer, some shorter, none requiring
3. Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, Are the Bad Guys Winning?
   Sep 13, 2026 · original
   “Let us always remember: That those who thought the world could be ruled by hate and fear were wrong. Our country did not let that dark vision of humanity stand. That vigilance is still required to protect and secure us. That we are one people—drawn from different religious, ethnic and national origins—but that we have been forged into an extraordinary whole. We are American.” *** The words above are from former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s concluding remarks to attendees at a 9/11 memorial observance at the Pentagon on Friday, where she shared the lectern and speechmaking with President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Dan Caine and others. Her address was clearly meant to inspire Americans to embrace their better angels and reclaim, elsewhere in her speech, the “certainty that this country is exceptional…and…that we hold a bedrock fa
4. It Had Been Too Long Since I’d Last Visited Duke Gardens…
   Aug 30, 2026 · original
   So I’d been all week seeking some pathway out of the chaos and rancor, some mode of reconciling the angers, shoutings, the sneerings with the longings for some sense, some refuge of comity and just plain normal. A retreat to the shelves for daily visitations with old friends D.T. Suzuki and Thich Nhat Hanh. With my now broken-binded and discolored edition of “The Dhammapada,” supposedly the Buddha’s very own words, purchased in the University of Redlands bookstore on October 26, 1977 for the princely sum of $3.45. (The date had helpfully been stamped on the opening page.) Took an extended whack at stitching their voices in with Samuel Beckett and his waiting, his emptiness, his desperate circling around words that would not come, ideas that would not cohere, relations that would not form. Came up empty myself. Then a Sunday morning suggestion from my partner in this whole enterprise, wit
5. Brilliant Cover Songs #9: Miles Davis’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”
   Aug 24, 2026 · original
   One of the sneaky pleasures of this “Brilliant Cover Songs” series for me is that I get to immerse—and perhaps give you a first listen or re-introduction to—not only the cover version but the original, as well. And when we’re talking about such powerhouse musical forces as jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) and the Spanish modern classical composer Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), the pleasure is all the more enhanced and worthy of attention. The last time Davis appeared in this space was in a post a bit over three years ago that explored the question of how transcendent, soul-satisfying art so often comes from terrible people. In it, I chose as the closing musical number Davis’s achingly beautiful solo rendition of the Cyndi Lauper pop classic “Time After Time” (co-written with Rob Hyman). The first time I heard Davis cover it live back in 1988, the song had left me (and from what I cou
6. Is America Finally Ready for a Decency Caucus?
   Aug 16, 2026 · original
   Did you know that there’s a “Congressional Baking Caucus?” Two members, a Republican from Pennsylvania and a Democrat from North Carolina. Both male, in case you were wondering, projecting a vision of getting together now and again to advance the cause of bi-partisan scone-baking across our great land. There’s also a “Congressional Bourbon Caucus,” a “Congressional Bus Caucus,” a “Congressional Caucus on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Technologies,” a “Bipartisan Ski and Snowboard Caucus” (think Colorado, Utah and California!), a “Congressional Algae Caucus,” a “Congressional Ferry Caucus” (what, no equal time for a “Fairy Caucus?”), a “Congressional Chicken Caucus” (I’m moved to ask, alive or dead?), a “Congressional Candy Caucus” (with a Representative “Smucker” as a member), a “Congressional Bulgaria Caucus,” a “Congressional Cement Caucus” (whose members I trust have permissio
7. Carlos Fuentes Swallows the World and Digests It Fully in “How I Started to Write”
   Aug 8, 2026 · original
   “Neruda, Reyes, Paz; Washington, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Paris, Geneva; Cervantes, Balzac, Rimbaud, Thomas Mann: only with all the shared languages, those of my places and friends and masters, was I able to approach the fire of literature and ask it for a few sparks.” So goes the conclusion of the lead essay by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) in his 1988 collection, “Myself With Others.” That summary of places and names in “How I Started to Write” reflects but some of the currents that coursed always warm-bloodedly through Fuentes’s ever-restless intellectual life and the works of imagination that he regarded as its pinnacle. Son of a Mexican diplomat who was serving in Panama City at the time of his birth, Fuentes spent his formative years aged 6-12 in Washington D.C., where his father served as ambassador. “I grew up in the vibrant world of the Ameri
8. Why I Give Money to Beggars
   Aug 2, 2026 · original
   (First, a note on language. I use the term “beggar” in this post, rather than the more modern and commonly used “panhandler,” with specific intention. “Panhandler” is regarded as more value-neutral than “beggar,” which supposedly carries with it a degree of moralism and judgment. In my view, however, “panhandler” minimizes and thus devalues the actual desperation of these people who live in such drastically reduced circumstances, which calls out for a fully human response not reflected in a word that more suggests a job title than it does the pathos we all know is the actual case. I feel the same way about the technocratic euphemism of “unhoused” to describe “homeless” people. “Home” conjures deep human feeling that is terrible to be without, so we should call that absence, that terribleness, for exactly what it is in our quest for compassion and search for remedies, rather than bury it
9. Brilliant Songs #62: Jake Runestad’s “Let My Love Be Heard”
   Jul 26, 2026 · original
   After a couple of years of what has felt like an extraordinary period of loss, I’ve come to realize, in that forehead-slapping “Duh!!! kind of way signifying I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, that there’s nothing “extraordinary” at all about people dying with regularity at my age, all through my family and friendship circle. It’s just the way of things, a pure math and probability issue, that a certain percentage of people die at rates that increase with each decade. Just a few tragic unfortunates suffer their demise in the early decades, but the trend line goes steadily and then precipitously up past the half- and then three-quarters of a century mark where I have now found myself—almost shockingly—perched. This is the magic of music, when it does what no other art form can quite manage to do. All the cool, data-driven objectivity in the world about that matter can’t obscure the sombe
10. Putting the Pieces in Place for the “Electoral Crisis” Strategy Coming Our Way in November
    Jul 18, 2026 · original
    On January 13, 2019, nearly 10 months before what would become the first violent attempt in American history to overthrow the results of a presidential election with the full blessing of the incumbent president who refused to accept his defeat, I wrote in this space the following while awaiting the outcome of the Robert Mueller investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election: “So what will they do, these Republicans, if Mr. Mueller presents conclusive evidence…that the president of the United States willfully and repeatedly sought the assistance of and, in return, provided succor to, a longtime nemesis of his own country? I think I know, absent a meaningful Republican abandonment of their bespoiled standard bearer, what Mr. Trump would do. He would, following true to the form that has dictated every move of his presidency, fight it for all he is worth, refusing to step aside,

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