DISLOCATED TIMES LIKE THESE inevitably create scattered thoughts. My own directionless thinking has strayed, unsurprisingly, to Daniel Defoe’s compelling 200-pager: A Journal of the Plague Year.
It’s not what it might seem from its explanatory subtitle: Observations or Memorials of the most Remarkable OCCURENCES, Public as Private, which happened in LONDON during the Great Visitation.
Continue reading “Journaling a Plague Year – and What Comes Next?” »
THIS IS A FIRST for me as I pound my well-trodden media beat. I’ll confess I had never seen a Tibetan film until I saw the hauntingly resonant ‘Jinpa’. And now I want to see more – at least, if they’re made by director and novelist Pema Tseden. (He has directed five previous movies for us to choose from.) Continue reading “Exquisite – and Bold – Film-Making Under Totalitarian Rule” »
MY DEAREST COMPANION said as we were leaving the stunning exhibit-hall: “It’s terrible that we never learn about this, while we’re told so much about ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.” Continue reading “Africa’s Under-Acknowledged Cultural Legacies, Triumphantly Exhibited Today” »
Dateline: CHICAGO – THIS IS A HEARTLAND CITY WHERE MEDIA people have long come to familiarize – or reacquaint – themselves with home truths about American politics. Novelist Norman Mailer traveled here to bring us his searing non-fiction account of a divided America when the 1968 Democratic National Convention disintegrated into chaos and violence. Continue reading “Madame Speaker Portrayed as Modern Hero” »
ON THIS FINAL DAY of the decade I’m responding to a repeated call from the insistent Jill Goodman. Jill, of course, is one of my interlocutors – along with Marshall Miles – in the weekly Public Radio version of this column, which has been airing consistently throughout that decade and longer. (Our first broadcast together was in fact way back in 2007.)
Continue reading “A Decade Ends – Will Media Fully Do Their Work In The Next?” »
