THE MILLENNIUM began at midnight in Australia with a blazing word on the Sydney harbor bridge: “Eternity” in a flowing script called copperplate. What was it supposed to mean? By then Aussies — but few of the global TV watchers — knew the story behind it. There was a writer — Arthur Stace […]
In the golf comedy “Caddyshack” Bill Murray, playing the blundering groundskeeper, brags: “I caddied for the Dalai Lama.” Doug Preston, a Santa Fe writer, can say, “I rode a ski lift with the Dalai Lama.” But it’s no laff line. It’s true. His reminiscence in Slate releases a flood of links on Google if you
I RECALL Professor Charles Nilon, teaching a class in modern novels at Boulder, identified Ernest Hemingway as “an American gentleman.” The memory surfaced as I watched the first episode of the Ken Burns documentary on PBS. Like a British noble, Hemingway toured the colonies, hunted trophy animals, behaved well in military combat, was a sportsman
“Klara And The Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro is a tale told by a robot living — if that is the right word — in an AI-governed dystopia where automatons imitate humans and ambitious parents submit their children to “genetic editing” for success in the vicious meritocracy. She (Klara) is an “AF” (artificial friend) bought like
Myra Ellen Jenkins would be happy she is not alive now. There is such a thing as living too long. I wrote in the 1980’s about her involvement as New Mexico state historian in the first controversy over the historic obelisk in the center of the Santa Fe Plaza. It was all about a word.
IN PLACE of what print journalists refer to as President Trump’s lies, cable commenters have a less formal term. Trevor Noah of the Comedy Channel and Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo of CNN just say “bullshit.” If that sums up Trump’s usual performances, then press briefings and most interviews are bull sessions, with consequences I
Experiencing extreme social distancing at home on May Day, I was reminded of something I wrote as a journalist that was never published because I could not figure out how to make it topical. It was about the first American Maypole. Thomas Morton, a relocated London barrister, planted it in 1627 on a hill aboveMassachusetts Bay.
A Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, offers a wise thought experiment for our pandemic times. Here is my literal translation of Verse 80 with updates in brackets: Little country, few people [Small mountain town, closed to tourists] Devices that can do the work of 10-100 [Power tools] Go unused [Construction
By LARRY JOSEPH CALLOWAY (c) “Educated” is an ironic title for a memoir by a young woman, Tara Westover, who showed up at Brigham Young University from rural Idaho at age 17 without any education at all, not even home schooling. All she knew was the mountain where she lived and the personalities of her
By Larry Joseph Calloway The networks were so unprepared for Donald Trump’s win that my election night switching caught only one panelist who could speak with authority for the key voters euphemistically called “white – no college degree.” He was J. D. Vance, the black-haired concise-speaking author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” an immediately personal story of
