Movie Moving?

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If you don’t know me personally, you may not realize how frequently I quote movies.  On a daily basis, films I’ve seen—particularly multiple times—are the source of some of what I say.  Films have tremendous impact.  Some theorists have even argued that they are the new mythology.  So imagine my distress when an opinion piece in the New York Times suggested that movies are losing their relevance.  Media comes in so many varieties that we can take our choice.  YouTube and TikTok have given television its first real competition in my lifetime.  Our local CD store is a rather sad place, and does anybody even remember Blockbuster?  But movies—the media of entertainment for over a century—irrelevant?

What of the movie star?  It doesn’t matter which one.  The phenomenon of it.  The person recognized as a household name.  Now we seem to be losing yet one more frame of reference.  There’s no firm ground left for culture, it seems.  Is this why things are falling apart?  Movies weren’t the only glue, of course, but I wrote three books on movies.  The larger implications are sobering.  Media, of course, is always changing.  Movies are but a modern form of story-telling.  Already decades ago the weight for this began to swing towards what we used to call video games.   The younger generation prefers stories where their actions decide the ending.  To a point.  Someone had to program this thing and has predetermined possible outcomes.  Like a movie, it’s a story.

Stories are probably the oldest form of human entertainment.  The nonfiction books that sell the best are those with a narrative arc—they tell a story.  Nonficionados may be reluctant to admit that they’re drawn to stories, but we all are.  It’s human nature.  While I prefer books to movies, there are times I just can’t settle down to read.  And also, horror novels don’t quite scare the same way that horror movies do.  Movies have their place.  They can be tremendously expensive to make and many now have so much CGI that actors are disguised beneath layers of code.  Kind of like The Matrix.  Even so, they are telling stories in a format that has become a huge industry that ties culture together with common references.  Can you image a world where there was never a Star Wars?  The internet has perhaps blurred the line a bit and movies are evolving.  As long as we tell one another stories, however, we’re still human.

Image credit: Georges Méliès

Shadowy House

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The more you learn the more you realize just how little you know.  The House of Dark Shadows was like a key, a missing puzzle piece for me.  Dark Shadows has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert.  I never saw the whole series on television—I saw many episodes once, during my childhood.  Enough to know who the characters were—especially Barnabas—but when I stopped watching it (when? Why?) I started reading the novels by Marilyn Ross.  Clearly the soap opera was gaining enough ratings to merit the building of a franchise.  But the thing was, there is so much in life that I never concentrated on it.  I read the novels occasionally, and I never saw House of Dark Shadows when it came out in 1970.  Not, in fact, until 2022.

Since I was only eight when it came out, even though it was rated PG, I would’ve had neither the means nor the money to get to a theater.  I had, in fact, never even heard of it.  Having been raised a Fundamentalist, I have a tendency to believe there is just one way a story goes.  I know there are variations—they occur in the canon of Scripture, even—but something deep-seated tells me it should go this way.  House of Dark Shadows (which explains a lot of Tim Burton’s decisions for his movie reboot) has a different story line.  Given that it was 1970 it would have been in the midst of the initial series broadcast.  The movie was quite successful.  Still, Barnabas ends up victimizing Carolyn (which in the novels he is reluctant to do), and Roger, and outright killing a number of people.

I spent the movie trying to process how the story should go.  Of course, I haven’t seen the soap opera enough to know.  This Dark Shadows franchise is episodic and it doesn’t add up.  The film was shot quickly and leaves gaps in the story.  It certainly doesn’t track well with the tale of the Maine family who knows about “cousin Barnabas”and that he visits Collinwood from time to time.  Our course, between the series and the novels there are many, many avenues to select.  When Tim Burton got the idea to make a movie he had an abundance of stories from which to choose.  The House of Dark Shadows isn’t a great movie.  It is gothic and moody and a standalone story.  And it has me wondering about what other dark shadows conceal.

Eclectic Electric

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It all began with the internet going out.  Less than a month ago the modem was replaced, but the tech this time thought it could be the co-ax cable.  We went outside and he fed the cable through, but when he got to the box he noticed a problem.  “Your electrical drop isn’t attached to the house,” he said.  Sure enough, he was right.  “I can’t replace the rest of the cable until that’s fixed—it’s an electrocution risk.” So I called the electric company.  They said I’d need an electrician to secure the conduit to the house, but they’d send somebody out to look.  The tech must’ve been in the area because he arrived just after I spoke to our electrician.  “Your cable has never been permanently connected to the house,” he observed.  “It should be.  We can do that, but you’ve got to get an electrician to attach that conduit.”

The funny thing about this is actually two-fold.  One is that our home inspector didn’t notice that the electrical cable was not secured to the house (once the tech pointed it out to me it was perfectly obvious).  The second is that the former owner of the house claimed to be an electrician.  In fact, he runs a electrical contracting business.  The electrician we pay has said, on one of his many jobs here, “I don’t think he was an electrician.”  I, for one, believe the guy we pay.  So now we have to have him come out and secure the conduit.  Then call the electric company and have them permanently connect the cable (the house has only been here since 1890, so do a few weeks matter?).  Then we call our internet provider and have them replace the cable that’s been causing our internet issues.

We like our quirky old house.  It does seem, however, that many owners have neglected various aspects of it.  And that our home inspector was a somnambulist.  We’re just trying to get it up to code.  Well, actually, we’re just trying to get a secure internet connection because three livelihoods rely upon it.  Shoddy work has consequences, and caveat emptor reigns.  Few things are more basic to modern life than electricity.  Or even the internet, for that matter.  These things are fragile, it turns out, in ways difficult to imagine.  There’s a lesson hidden here, and it reaches back, I suspect, before the taming of electricity.

Image credit: Mircea Madau, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Moving Movies

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I read something recently which began something like, “Do you remember when you first saw…?” (fill in the blank with a title of a movie).  This got me to thinking.  Movies used to be community events.  I’m not the first to notice this, but your community would wait (especially if it wasn’t especially urban) until a hyped up movie came to a local theater.  Everyone would see it and it was all that they’d talk about for days.  The internet makes all of that rather obsolete.  Even the part where you were the less popular sort who had to wait for the film to be shown on television to get in on the fun.  You can set up an account to see the movie at home while those who aren’t afraid of Covid go to the theater.  Or you may be like me—so busy that years pass before you get to it.  Hopelessly behind.

There is definitely a benefit to being able to catch a movie you missed at the theater when it’s convenient to do so.  You might be a bit late to the party, though.  And, depending on your tastes, you may be watching the movie alone.  I can’t recall having ever gone to a theater alone until recent years.  Once when my wife was away, pre-pandemic, I went to a local theater to catch the latest Annabelle movie.  Since I’m an early person the theater was pretty empty—at least one guy and his girlfriend, or a girl and her boyfriend, depending, were there with me.  Maybe a couple others I didn’t know.  Nobody to talk it over with.  Like bowling alone, I suppose.  The last movie I saw in a theater, The Conjuring 3, I was literally the only one there.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

I did recall the first time I’d seen the movie in the article.  I was watching with headphones on, sitting in my bedroom.  Sometimes it’s the living room.  I do recall my reaction, which is, after all, what the article is about.  Still, it was a movie that was watched without discussion, without seeing the reactions of others.  Watching it was, nevertheless, an enjoyable enough experience.  An intellectual one, even.  But as a former teacher I still have this haunting sense that if there’s no-one with whom to exchange information, remembering that first time becomes somewhat muted.  I suppose that’s why I keep this blog going.  I can interact with others on the internet and, collectively, recall seeing our movies together.  Attempt to be part of the discussion.

Son of Comfort

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So the other day I was reading a book proposal for another editor.  It mentioned the mononymous Barnabas.  Since the proposal wasn’t from a biblical scholar I wondered if this was the same Barnabas mentioned in Acts as the sometime traveling companion to Paul of Tarsus.  As I began to type this into the search box—and this was on my work computer, which, I hope, doesn’t know my reading habits—it autosuggested Barnabas Collins as the first choice.  One of the frustrating things about devices these days is they know who we are and sometimes we want an objective opinion from the internet.  Is Barnabas Collins as popular as I like to think he is, or is it just a case of my work computer anticipating my off-hour whims?  I sincerely hope it’s the former.

The proposal, by the way, was surprisingly referencing Paul’s Barnabas.  I wasn’t aware that he was much known outside biblical studies circles.  Probably about as rarely as Barnabas Collins is known in such circles.  There has been a resurgence of interest in Dark Shadows that has taken place in spite of, or perhaps partially because of, Tim Burton’s movie.  The film made many missteps, but people from my generation who’d never heard of him before began to reference Barnabas Collins to me.  I’ve never been a soap opera watcher.  It does seem that many college students used to go through such a phase—again, it’s the story that draws them in—but that never really happened to me.  I’d grown up watching Dark Shadows, however, and I’ve been tempted a time or two to start watching the series again.  With well over a thousand episodes, some of which are lost, it would be a major time commitment.  And besides, it wouldn’t recapture those grade-school afternoons watching what my mom thought was a waste of time.

The name Barnabas probably means something like “son of comfort.” I don’t know how the somewhat desperate writers, trying to gain back a slipping audience, came up with the name.  Their introduction of the supernatural into the daily drama did, however, transform television.  The usual demographic for the show was a bit older than me when it was being aired and I didn’t by any stretch see the entire series.  I did see enough, however, to forever frame my view of vampires.  There have been efforts, including one current, to reboot the series on television.  It may eventually rise again from its coffin. Featuring, of course, Barnabas.

Look It Up

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Say you remember something, but imperfectly.  Maybe it’s from years ago.  You have distinct recollection of a word or two, but other details (author’s name, publisher) escape you.  In the case of a book maybe you remember the cover.  If a journal article you’re out of luck there.  Not even Google can help you.  (I use Ecosia regularly, because they plant trees, but sometimes you just need to google.)  This happened to both my daughter and myself recently.  She was trying to remember a childhood book and I was trying to recollect an article I’d read while working on my dissertation.  And although I remember Edinburgh very well, that was, uh, three decades ago.  I tried searching different combinations of key words, but there’s just too much stuff on the internet.

One of the strange features of ancient Near Eastern mythology is that it’s extremely popular online but not in academia.  Departments have been closed down.  Smart people left unemployed.  But just take a guess whose websites come up first when you google a god?  After Wikipedia, it’s often fan and fantasy material for page after page.  Universities haven’t figured out how to monetize this interest, so it remains the purview of those who’ve read a book or two (or done a lot of web surfing) and have popularized the deity.  If universities offered courses that caught people where they lived, there’d be a steady audience.  That fickle lover academia, however, is quite coy.  In my daughter’s case it was fairly easy for my wife to locate the title and bibliographic details.  My case was a little harder.

Most sources I consulted on my dissertation are in my book, A Reassessment of Asherah.  (It is available in PDF form for free on Academia.edu).  Back in the day, I made extensive bibliographies.  I pulled it from the shelf and ran an index card down through the entire bibliography.  Apparently I hadn’t listed it there.  Or I was remembering the title incorrectly.  There’s a distinct possibility that I imagined it.  When you’re an active researcher you keep ideas current by going over them time and again.  I can still remember some individual articles that were used to make a point some thirty years ago, but those beside the point have somehow vacated my gray matter.  In the end I never did find the reference.  Perhaps some day, like bread cast upon the water, it will come back to me.  Like said bread, it too will likely be soggy by then.

Learning to Fly

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“Be afraid.  Be very afraid.” This quote originates with David Cronenberg’s The Fly.  Of course, after watching the original, how could I not watch its successful remake?  I initially saw this one upon its 1986 release in a Boston theater.  I hadn’t seen it in some 35 years but some of the scenes were as fresh in my memory as if I’d seen it last year.  It’s safe to say that it made an impression on me.  Even usual critics of horror gave the film high marks.  Both it and its predecessor with the same title were quite successful in the financial department and became part of popular culture.  The remake ends without the philosophical statement of Vincent Price in the original, choosing despair instead.  I’ve never seen the sequel.

I picked this up as a used DVD many years ago.  Mainly I wanted to have it on hand in case the mood struck to see it again.  I did recall that, as a Cronenberg film, it was a gross-out of body horror.  So much so that it’s difficult to classify it as science fiction.  It, along with its near contemporary Alien, demonstrated that the fusion of the genres was possible.  Perhaps inevitable.  At the same time, movies, like most other media, have proliferated to the point that such standouts are rare.  Yes, there are still Academy Awards and Golden Globes, but who but a professional can see all the offerings out there?  It feels like we’ve moved beyond the time when a movie could define a generation.  But on a deeper level, that’s why The Fly is about.

We, on the far end from the white male oligarchs, are blending.  We’re no longer simply accepting what we’re told.  We’re becoming more global and more people are starting to break into the power structures.  Even if they sometimes transform if they do.  I saw a recent newspaper article about what to do with your second home, as in decorating it.  Second home?  The majority of us are having trouble up keeping our one home, and that’s if we’re even owners.  Society needs a telepod.  The end results may be messy, for sure, but we need to stop thinking in exclusive terms.  Cronenberg indicated back in the eighties that the movie was about disease and aging and letting those we love go.  That gives the film its poignancy, in a kafkaesque way.  At the same time it may be a teaching tool.  Yes, we can be afraid, very afraid, and still learn.

Sacred Sites

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The sacred is hard to define.  Calling it “holy”is only to pass the buck, and I can’t get beyond the feeling that we need something more up-to-date than Rudolf Otto.  Something that takes into account what the religious world looks like in the next century.  No matter which direction we turn we run into undefinable words—numinous, heightened, transcendent.  Wonderful words that fail to capture the essence of the experience.  This has been on my mind because I’ve been thinking about sacred spaces.  No matter how secular we may be, we all know such places exist.  They may be places significant to large numbers of people, or to a set of one.  Perhaps there are many kinds of sacred spaces and many ways that they may be made so.

The place where a significant event in life took place, for good, is recorded in that way our brains have of switching into slow-motion, high-attention mode.  Were we not so secular we might say something spiritual was going on.  Pilgrimage sites worldwide are often associated with what’s interpreted as a religious event.  Those of us who weren’t there at the time feel compelled to visit.  To breathe the air of that place.  To linger in wonder.  Is there something still there?  I tried desperately to feel this when I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  It was difficult with so very many other people there.  I went alone and I was thinking maybe something might happen.  Like what happened to me at the Church of All Nations next to Gethsemane.

As I was pondering this, many such sites came to mind.  The birthplaces or living spaces of great writers have always drawn me into such a reverie.  Standing in Poe’s house in Philadelphia, knowing that one of the world’s iconic writers saw these same walls, walked these same floors, but for him it was likely ordinary.  For the rest of us it’s something more.  Yet I’m no closer to defining it.  Thinkers like Otto had professions that included unstructured thinking time.  Many of us don’t have that luxury.  We feel the urge but the clock for our 925 keeps inexorably ticking, like the beating of the heart beneath the floorboards that make a place sacred.  Many of these places are far too personal to write about in a public place.  They await someone with the time and inclination to think on these things to give us to words to define them.

Not Really New

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It’s called the New Books Network.  I have no idea what its stats are, but it is a place to get word out about your book that the academy has apparently overlooked.  I pitched Nightmares with the Bible to them some months ago and I recently had an interview about it.  I’ll keep you posted when it appears.  I suppose those who read this blog for the horror content sometimes think I may’ve forgotten about it.  The fact is I think of horror every day but there’s more to my psyche than just that.  This blog is a romp through part of what’s on my mind.  Sometimes it’s the quotidian horror of everyday.  At times it’s full of curiosity and wonder.  Sometimes I just trying to figure out how to work this thing.

So with the New Books Network.  I found out about it from an interview I heard with the guy who started it.  Funny—one interview leads to another.  He encouraged those listening to pitch their books.  I don’t have an institution to support mine, or students to have to buy a copy (and I’ve received zero royalties for it), so I figured what’ve I got to lose?  It was quite a nightmare (speaking of which) to arrange a time that worked for both interviewer and interviewee.  I think we rescheduled about half-a-dozen times, but then finally we both had a few free minutes together to chat.  Perhaps it’s a good thing I’ve been reading about the Devil.  

This was actually my third interview about this book.  Perhaps it’s a measure of how small the impact it’s had has been that I can recall each one so precisely.  You’ve got to start somewhere, so why not here?  The last question asked was about the next book.  I do hope I have a few more left in me.  I started writing early but publishing late.  Just because you write doesn’t mean people will read what you produce.  I find writing the most hopeful avocation ever.  Like a sower with his or her seeds, broadcasting them across the air, hoping they’ll land legible.  If there’s anything worth reading here there’s always the possibility it’ll be discovered someday.  That’s optimism with a glass half empty!  In any case, check out the New Books Network.  There are hundreds of books there to learn about.  And, I suspect, many authors who’d like the world to know what they’ve written.

Monasticism

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The other day I was reading about monasticism (as one does), and something curious occurred.  The article, which was describing a famous monastery, mentioned that monks lived in the convent.  Now, lest you think anything about religion is simple, I must clarify that in English it is common usage to refer to “monasteries”as places where monks (male) live.  Again, in English usage “convents”are for nuns (female).  The words, however, have a more interesting history than that.  Not exactly interchangeable (can you imagine the confusion?), they do originally refer to different kinds of institution.  

Photo by Manuel Torres Garcia on Unsplash

Often monasticism is traced back to Anthony of Egypt.  Anthony famously kept himself away from other people to devote his life to God.  This, of course, led other people to seek him out, wanting what he’d found.  Eventually, the narrative goes, the idea occurred that lots of guys could live together in common, but shut away from the rest of the world.  Thus monasteries were born.  The story’s actually more complicated and I can’t give you the full picture here.  We do know that even in Judaism, before Christianity came along, there were separatist sects.  One of them, known for convenience as “the Essenes,” set up a commune not far from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.  They lived lives of purity and prayer and women were strictly forbidden.  They seem even to have had a monastic rule.  They lived on the edge of the desert and perhaps were responsible for the famous scrolls.  Monasticism thus had early roots.

The European Middle Ages were the high-water mark for monasticism.  Like our own day, people were dealing with plagues and strong-arm kings and lack of adequate infrastructure.  Many powerful monasteries had been founded, and they could be for monks or nuns, generally not in mixed company.  There were also solitary monks (it was more difficult for women to wander about alone), called mendicants.  Such people needed places to stay now and again, and that was what was called a convent.  A monastery could be for either sex, and the word “nunnery”eventually helped to make this clear.  The English use of the words, while convenient, can lead to confusion because established monasteries could have convents as part of their design.  I suppose not many people are really interested in monasticism these days.  Looking at what’s happening in the world, however, I wonder if we might not be on the cusp of a modern replacement for them.  It would be something curious indeed.

Saving What?

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It’s soul-tormenting.  For those who always awake in the dark, February starts to offer the hope of some early morning light.  It brings cheer and optimism into late winter.  We are awaking from the long night, only to be plunged back into darkness in an act of sheer, collective insanity.  For many weeks we’ll be tired all the time.  Less productive.  Automobile accidents will increase.  Finally, around mid-April, the early light will return.  Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I like Daylight Saving Time.  I see no logical reason, however, to set our clocks back in the fall.  What good does it do?  Gradual change is much easier on the human psyche, so why do we force a sudden shock to the system twice a year?  If the apocalypse ever actually happens it will be when we set our clocks forward.

Human hubris messes with time.  Many people simply accept the time shift as something we “have to do.” We don’t.  In the technological age there is no reason to continue what was initially a war-time effort to use light to increase production.  Hey, look, it didn’t prevent wars from happening.  All it causes are wicked huge yawns and their knock-on effects.  Time is a valuable commodity and yet we waste it twice annually, with abandon.  People as a group are a lethargic bunch.  The threat of war led the world to adopt a measure to shift light into the evening time, but for only part of the year.  Why not all the year?

When I commuted into New York City I often stood waiting for the bus in the dark.  Late February would come and some cheer at standing in the cold (there was no bus shelter) was possible with the faint streaks of dawn arriving before the bus, like the earth finally opening its sleepy eye.  March would come and I was once again in the dark.  Finally, about a month later the light would return.  Is it necessary to climb the same hill twice?  Can’t we just spring forward and leave it at that?  There will be lots of yawns at work tomorrow.  People will be careless while driving.  It may even lead to deaths.  There’s no reason to do this, but we keep on, as if it were some kind of divine command.  I’ve yet to meet one person—no wait, there was one—who thinks this system works.  Empty ritual is the worst kind.

Lenten Friday

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I thought something was on fire when I first saw it.  A plume of black smoke rising against a backdrop of lowering, sullen clouds in a late winter sky.  Then I remembered that there’s a pet crematorium in that part of town.  I was witnessing the end, the smudged spirit of someone’s departed companion.  It made me reflective.  We currently have no pets.  (We can barely afford keeping ourselves going without adding another mouth to feed.)  Having grown up with a variety of animals–dogs, cats, birds, fish, turtles, guinea pigs—and having kept fish, a bird, and a couple hermit crabs for our daughter, I know the connections we make with our animal kin.  They teach children about death.  And they have the capacity to make all of us reflect on what it means to be alive.

I’ve buried my share of pets, but I have no idea what happened to the larger ones.  The cats.  The dogs.  It was pretty obvious when a dog died.  The cats, which were outside pets, tended simply to disappear.  There were no dog grave markers and I still have no clue what the grown ups did with the carcasses.  I once visited a pet cemetery; it was an oddly moving place.  Although we’re taught theologically that animals don’t have souls, it feels like part of ours dies when they go.  That strange teaching is courtesy of the Bible and it manages to hold sway in both science and religion.  And so another puff of black smoke rises from down the block.

Religion has a tremendous influence on us, whether we’re personally religious or not.  Since humans have always eaten animals, it’s likely that the earliest religions helped to assuage the guilt of killing something that so obviously has feelings and thoughts and could, in other circumstances, have been us.  When monotheism came in there was a great reduction in souls.  Humans alone made in God’s image learned to dominate other animals.  Today we have feedlots that are animal Hells while we pat Fido on the head and mourn his passing.  I somehow doubt that we’ll ever find ourselves back in the natural world.  We’ll likely go extinct before that happens.  Until that day, however, some of our saddest memories will be from when our beloved companions pre-decease us.  You can never be certain which way your thoughts might turn when lowering, sullen clouds fill a late winter sky.

Discovering Diaries

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When you move, there are always things that get lost.  I wrote about Nietzsche recently, but one of the puzzles from my latest move, now approaching four years ago, was my college diaries.  (I have to be careful not to write dairies, since my spelling could use some attention.)  I used to keep diaries.  I haven’t done so since early in my married life, and even a little before.  While looking for an empty notebook for use at work, I discovered two diaries in the attic.  I’d been looking for them for, it’s safe to say now, years.  I spend quite a bit of time in the attic, so the fact that I didn’t find them in plain sight—a virtual purloined diary—was odd.  But not nearly as odd as what happened next.  

It was still part of our internet-free weekend.  Unable to get online, and having done my morning writing and reading, and with family listening to things in the background (I can’t read or write with background sounds such as music or talking), I picked up one of the diaries.  It was a lesson in the fragility of memory as well as how reading your own words from the past can make the present seem unreal.  It was a veil, if that’s not too Pauline, that came over me.  Who was that young man?  Was my life really that chaotic?  Were friends really that generous?  Did I really know that many people?  Why have specific ones stayed in mind while others who clearly meant so much of me slipped and fallen in my gray matter?

Like encountering a younger version of yourself, reading diaries opens new windows of self-reflection.  I guess I hadn’t remembered myself being as self-reflective as that man in his mid-twenties was.  Perhaps still is.  If you’ve spent any time on this blog you’re probably aware of my tendency to look at things from different angles.  To think things through.  My own brand of neurodiversity is what I think I have to offer.  I try to save my academic stuff for my published writings, but when as many years have passed, I wonder if I will look back on my early posts here and find myself asking who it was that wrote them.  Youth is a time of acquiring new experiences unlike any other.  Having grown up with so very little, the world itself seemed only days old back then.  If memory serves.

In War’s Domain

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Good for absolutely nothing, to borrow the wisdom of Edwin Starr, war has again marred Europe.  We could see it coming from afar because people keep electing autocrats and strong men always want to fight one another.  There should be international laws banning their election, but instead innocent people die because one man has to prove he’s bigger than another.  The evils of the Trump years will be with us for decades.  There’s nothing Christian about waging war.  Seems that some folks have forgotten their Sunday School.  Wasn’t the selfless, self-sacrificing carpenter from Nazareth known as the “prince of peace?”  Of course, Ukraine became Christian long before Russia did.  What deep-seated insecurity such “world leaders” have!

While not wanting to be drawn into open conflict yet again, the world has pretty much all sided with Ukraine.  It has the misfortune of being nestled next to a weary nation with a dictator who despises the west.  Who pulls down his pants and shows off his missiles when anyone starts to open their mouth.  Who isolates himself and his people in the name of self-aggrandizement.  We came close to that over here.  So close that it still makes me shiver.  We feel for the people of Ukraine.  They did nothing to provoke attack, and they probably knew other world leaders would keep their distance.  Putin, like Stalin, wants a USSR.  An empire to put the evil west in check.  Hadn’t we left that kind of thinking behind?  Hadn’t we grown up after World War Two?  Strong men learn nothing from history.  They look at it and see only a mirror reflecting only themselves.

Hitler annexed Poland.  Russia, which has more land than it knows what to do with, doesn’t need Ukraine to be part of it.  The good people of Russia are protesting, just like the women brave enough to march on Washington to protest the fascism America embraced for four years.  I’ve put off writing about this because it’s so difficult to do without dissolving into tears.  Beware of either bare-chested or chest-thumping politicians worldwide!  It’s time to end the era of the alpha male.  We need mothers to nurse us back to health.  They call it “Mother Russia” but what mother acts this way?  The women aren’t impressed, Vlad—they’re in the streets bravely protesting.  It’s International Women’s Day.  Let’s honor women. It’s time to let the women lead.  It’s time to put war behind us forever.

Photo by Jenna Norman on Unsplash

Wordle

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Each year in late capitalism seems to begin with a new fad.  This has been pronounced with the pandemic (which I almost wrote as “academic”) keeping people indoors.  Last year sea shanties were the rage with many of us finding ourselves humming something about a wellerman during the oddest times.  This year’s initial fad seems to be Wordle.  In case you’ve been living on the dark side of the moon, Wordle is an online game that is best described as Mastermind with five-letter words.  Mastermind, in case you were born after the Republican Party turned evil, is a game where you have six colored pegs that one person sets in a board a sequence of four.  The other player can’t see them, but has to try to replicate the colors in the right sequence.  At each guess the one who selected the sequence gives the guesser the following information: which pegs are the right color and which pegs were the right color in the right place.  (It occurs to me that explaining Mastermind could have been left out and I could’ve just described Wordle.  But what’s the fun in that?)

In any case the Wordle player has six chances to guess the right word based on the same clues: the right letter in the wrong place (yellow), or the right letter in the right place (green).  The hook is that you can only get one puzzle per day (otherwise many of us would be starving to death and out of work).  As a kid, I have to say, I could play Mastermind for hours.  I even brought our daughter up on it.  There’s something beguiling about trying to figure out what’s in somebody else’s mind.  There is a dark side to it, however.

I read a lot.  Lately I find that when I’m reading I’m secretly scanning for five-letter words that might be a good initial guess for Wordle.  The ideal word has no repeated letters and at least two vowels.  You need to narrow down the vowels first because every word has to have one of those six letters, since “y” functions as a vowel.  The other day I was thinking “s” has enough lubricant to function as a vowel too, but I digress.  Isn’t that the point of Wordle, though?  To digress?  There’s so much despair in the world with autocrats in power and the planet melting down that we need a little boost.  If only I could let myself read normally again, all might be well with the world.