It’s another Sunday, so there’s another episode of CBS Sunday Morning on my DVR. As I’ve noted, I have cut back on my consumption of news. I’ve decided that mainlining alarmist coverage of aberrant events just isn’t good for my mental health or my perspective on reality. CBS Sunday Morning is one of the few news shows that I still make a point of watching. It doesn’t focus on the outrages and catastrophes of the last 24 hours as most news programming does, or the bizarre and menacing topics that are fodder for many news magazine shows. . . .
Category: Recommendations
Auldbrass Plantation
In the spring of 2015 I watched a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about Auldbrass in Beaufort, SC, the only southern plantation designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Though I was familiar with Wright, I’d never heard of Auldbrass. . . .
My Favorite Science Fiction Author
When I was thirteen years old, a very literate friend of my parents was chatting with me one day about what I was reading. When she learned that I was an avid reader of books in the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction series (Tom Swift and His Jetmarine, Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship, Tom Swift and His Giant Robot), she said, “I think we can do better than that,” . . .
Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
I blogged in June about an interview with Rutger Bregman that I’d heard on the public radio program “On the Media.” Bregman had just published a book entitled Humankind: A Hopeful History. I was so intrigued by what he had to say that I immediately ordered the book. I finished reading it yesterday…
“Five Wishes” for End of Life
I wrote yesterday about Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal. I’m following up with a post about an organization called Five Wishes, which helps families have conversations with their loved ones about the kinds of care and comfort they want as they approach the end of their lives. . . .
Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
In deciding what to write about today, I asked myself whether there are any books I’ve read lately that I would recommend unconditionally. As I scanned my bookshelf, the one that jumped out was Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. It’s a wonderful and thought-provoking look at how our society cares for — or fails to care for — its oldest and most infirm members. . . .
Morning Pages
Years ago my friend Jill told me about The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron, a book of advice for people who make their living in the creative arts. Perhaps the best-known suggestion in the book is a practice Cameron calls “Morning Pages,” a kind of stream-of-consciousness journaling to be done each morning. . . .
Jane the Virgin
Jennifer and I were late to the party with Jane the Virgin, which aired from 2014 to 2019. We just started watching it on Netflix and are four episodes in. The series won a raft of awards, but we never got around to checking it out until our friend Lee put us onto it a couple of weeks ago…
A Man Called Ove
I watched this movie last week and was really taken by it. It’s in Swedish, and while I sometimes find watching a movie with subtitles off-putting, I didn’t have a problem with it in this case. The protagonist, Ove, is a cranky, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing the rules of his neighborhood association…
Mining the Gold on Disney+
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I subscribed to the new Disney+ streaming service so Jennifer and I could watch the filmed version of the Broadway musical Hamilton. Then, with 29 days of our one-month subscription left to go, we started watching The Mandalorian, a Star Wars-based TV series. We’re three episodes into it…