I’m a fan of a particular type of low-budget movie, the kind we would have once called “direct-to-DVD,” but today might better be described as “straight-to-streaming.” These movies often feature a well-known actor in the lead role (about 50% of the time, it seems, this is Bruce Willis) surrounded by actors you’ve never heard of. But occasionally that formula is reversed: a relatively obscure actor plays the lead while at least some of the lesser parts are played by actors who are better known. Many of these low-budget movies are espionage thrillers featuring lots of car chases, fight scenes, and gunplay. But the ones I usually like best are less frenetic and more plausible. They are often stories about a crime and the pursuit of justice in some small American town. . . .
My Favorite Quote
I’ve read posts by several different bloggers sharing their favorite quotes —in particular, quotes they found inspirational or illuminating. Today I’m sharing mine. . .
The Great Conjunction
I can only imagine what the shamans of old would have made of the fact that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is occurring on the date of the winter solstice. The two gods embrace for the first time in memory, and immediately the days start getting longer. . . .
The Evening Checklist
For years now, before going to bed at night, I’ve put water in the electric kettle and gotten out a teabag and a mug so that everything’s ready when I make tea for Jennifer in the morning. This past fall I added a second item to my nighttime ritual. I had come down one morning and discovered that it was freezing on the ground floor. We’d opened a window the day before and forgotten to close it before going to bed, and the outdoor temperature had dropped precipitously overnight. So in addition to preparing the morning tea, I starting making sure the house was closed up each evening. . . .
How Bad Will This Winter Be for Our Mental Health?
There’s an opinion piece by Timothy Egan in this morning’s New York Times entitled “The Next 3 Months Are Going to Be Pure Hell.” He’s not so much referring to what the winter will be like for people who get sick with or lose loved ones to the coronavirus, or even those suffering economic adversity. He’s talking about the mental and emotional toll of the pandemic on everyone else as a consequence of being prisoners in our own homes, a lack of social contact, and the challenges of juggling full-time childcare and full-time jobs. I’ve made similar observations in this blog a couple of times over the last few months, particularly in a post on July 1. So it was surprising when, as I read Egan’s piece, I realized that I no longer believe that we’re in for a hellish winter. . . .
A Sci-Fi Metaphor for the Coronavirus
I was struck by a letter to the editor in yesterday’s New York Times. Reader David Berman wrote that “journalists have done us a tremendous disservice by often failing to clearly distinguish human behavior from virus behavior and who is responsible for what. . . . There will be no ‘dreaded winter virus surge.’ What there will be is a human holiday travel and festivity surge. The behavior of the virus won’t change the slightest bit. It is the human behavior that will be responsible for the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.” Reading Mr. Berman’s letter led me to imagine a hypothetical analogy to the coronavirus. . . .
The First Snowfall
As anyone in the northeastern United States knows full well, the first serious snowstorm of the season rolled through yesterday afternoon and overnight. In fact, it was the first real winter storm in two years. I’m patting myself on the back today for my foresight. For one thing, I got the snow blower out and tested it two weeks ago. But also, I heaved myself out of my recliner at 7:30 last night, went out in the cold and dark and removed all the snow that had come down so far. . . .
The Damage Done by Donald Trump
Bret Stephens is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He’s a conservative, a former deputy editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal, hired by the Times to help ensure that its op-ed page reflects a diversity of political opinions. I often find his opinion pieces entirely wrongheaded, but his column in yesterday’s paper was a bullseye. . . .
One Final Step, With Its Own Arcane Procedures, Before Biden is Declared the Winner
This year’s presidential election and Donald Trump’s seemingly ceaseless challenges to its legitimacy have provided the American public with a civics lesson the likes of which we’ve never seen. The abstruse process for determining the winner of an American presidential election has never been more widely discussed and elucidated. Before this year many of us assumed that the winner of an election was determined on Election Day or shortly thereafter. We may have understood that there were subsequent technical steps required to certify the results, but few of us realized how convoluted that pathway is . . .
Still Working on Being a Better Husband After 36 Years
My wife has noted that whenever she has the thought that our marriage has stood the test of time, she hears about a couple who has gotten divorced after having been together even longer than we have. There seems to be no length of time that a couple can be married that allows them to assume that they are “out of the woods.” After 36 years, I still make mistakes in my relationship and have to clean them up. . . .