All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. —James Thurber We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk … Read more
Great minds thinking alike, Pt. #38 … This “comment” came literally minutes after I read the piece in question. “Any thoughts on Kate Parry’s pretty extraordinary column on how Strib editors either: “A. Dumb down NYT stories for Strib readers, or “B. Improve NYT stories for Strib readers. “Depends on how you look at it, … Read more
Game #64, Road Game #32, Golden State 106, Minnesota 86 1. Postponing the Obvious So, did you catch that playoff fever? Heading into last night’s Golden State game, the Wolves only had to defeat the Warriors and have the Clips lose on the road in Charlotte to sneak into that 8th playoff seed with just … Read more
But couldn’t it all have been a little nicer, as my mother’d say. Did it have to kill everything in sight, did right always have to be so wrong? I know this body is impatient. I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind. Yet I loved, I love. I want no sentimentality. I … Read more
Here is a comment from reader Dave on yesterday’s post about blogs leading the mainstream press to the US Attorney’s story … “Brian I agree with you that stories are missed by the mainstream press and also agree that this is a worthwhile topic for discussion. But you owe your readers a small disclosure on … Read more
It has been called to my attention that another baseball season is almost upon us and it has been more than five months since I updated this site. Shame on me. Shame, shame, shame on me. Here I am, though, and here I will be –I swear on the Baseball Encyclopedia— on a regular basis … Read more
There is nothing–I repeat, nothing!–more intriguing cinematically this weekend than the selection of children’s films at the Central Library. Oh, you can check out the movies you should have seen over the past few weeks, or haul your child to see Terabithia, which, for my money, ought to have left that mysterious book alone (and … Read more
Tonight: Orchestra Hall, Peer Gynt, with performance enhancements provided by a troupe of physical theater-types. Rumor has it that the gray hairs have been complaining about all the “raunchy” material. But it’s Peer Gynt, so what do they expect?
Eric Alterman offers a valuable, and as far as I can tell, entirely accurate timeline of reporting on the U.S. Attorneys scandal. His essential point being that this fascinating episode of ham-fisted politicizing would have been ignored, as so many other stories have been, were it not for REPORTING work done by prominent blogs, principally … Read more
In the remarkable mini-series Band of Brothers, the story of one company of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II, episode nine is titled “Why We Fight”. The episode is about how the company discovered a German concentration camp. If it hadn’t been clear up to that point why the Americans were fighting the … Read more