IN ANY HUMAN AFFINITY GROUP, of whatever size, there are always one or two people whom “everybody knows” — be it for their work, skills or sheer ubiquity. This is the concept of Secret Fame: celebrities of the specialty worlds…
Month: July 2019
Why I Love: Cooking (Rewind)
IT’S THE PROCESS OF SCRAWLING ingredients on a shopping list, buying them, unpacking them, staging them, using them. It’s the quiet alchemy of watching those ingredients transform into something delicious and nourishing. It’s the adrenaline rush of following a new…
ORL Interview: Ivan Stang
INTERVIEWING ONE’S CULTURAL HEROES IS one of the greatest thrills of a career in journalism — even of amateur journalism. Such was the position in which I found myself while working for Obscure Research Labs in the early-to-mid-1990s. It gave…
How I Missed the Moonwalk
THE LAST THING I REMEMBER is Neil Armstrong opening the LEM’s front hatch to begin his televised and epic descent. When I was seven years old, and crazy for space, I had memorized the names of all the astronauts from…
Grudge Match
THE GOLDEN RULE OF INTERFAITH colloquy: Don’t Confuse The Levels. A few years ago, a “JewBu” (Jewish Buddhist) friend of mine told me a story that he felt illustrated the superiority of Buddhism over Judaism, or at least the limitations…
On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)
IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate for me how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and…
Backyard astronomers are a special breed. They savor their moments under the stars. They have an infatuation — a love affair — with the cosmos that grows and nurtures itself just as meaningful human relationships do. Of course, it is a less definable one-way relationship, but I have come to regard that feeling as the closest I can ever come to being at one with nature. After a night under the stars, I have a sense of mellowness, an amalgam of humility, wonder and discovery. The universe is beautiful, in both the visual and spiritual sense.”
–Terence Dickinson, Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe
Allegiance Redux
A FEW YEARS AGO, I revised the Pledge of Allegiance — instead of stating support for a piece of cloth, it celebrates what that cloth stands for. In today’s hyper-partisan political and cultural climate, it’s important to be both precise…
“It’s Just That…”
THERE’S A THING — WELL, LET’S call it a verbal placeholder-prefix — used by writers of audiovisual entertainments when they want a character to segue away from or into an awkward conversation. My friends, meet: “It’s just that…” You’ve heard…