From Bill McKibben’s newsletter: 44% That’s how much you’d save in carbon emissions by retiring your internal combustion car and replacing it with an EV—even if it was only two years old, and taking into account the amount of energy used to build both vehicles . A new study in Science from G. Elliott Campbell attempts to answer a question that’s puzzled many good-faith people: does it really…
“A number of years ago, I visited the Pentagon and stood before an exhibit that chronicled our military’s overt engagements. I was shocked. Today, the best estimate from the Tufts Military Intervention Project is that since 1945, excluding covert operations, the United States has participated in more than 200 military conflicts.” George Makari, “Thanatos Rising” ( American…
Since a few people in my feed are talking about podcasts, let me take this opportunity to recommend Michael Phillips' (former Chicago Trib movie critic and my former college housemate) podcast “The Movie Racket,” in which each week he discusses a different Hollywood saying (e.g., “a successful movie is 3 good scenes and no bad ones”). If you like classic movies (with some…
Every time I read an anti-AI article that makes impassioned claims about the irreplaceable humanity of our unique minds followed by a demand that AI should be “stopped,” I swear I can hear Tennessee Ernie Ford humming “John Henry” in the background.
Two more new theater posts on my Substack: Dance, and Keep Dancing , about one way change happens and BAM Crash , a post I wrote three years ago that I never published but that now seems…prescient
This is how things change . First, there’s one guy, and people think, “He’s kinda weird.” He could stop, but he doesn’t…until a second guy joins him, and the ball starts rolling. It takes vision to be the first one, but also courage to be the second. [Be sure to watch to the end] I know this is an oft-referenced video in business books, but nevertheless very…
Love this! A library checkout receipt – look at the bottom.
I’ve written a few new things on my theater-oriented Substack. One is on Sara Farrington’s inspiring book The Lost Conversation , in which she interviews many of the leaders and participants in the experimental theater and dance scene of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Joanne Akalaitis, Kate Valk, Robert Wilson, and many others). It’s called, cleverly, “ Sara Farrington’s…
My wife and I went to the Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown (MA) today to celebrate our 31st anniversary. We saw the new exhibit, An Exquisite Eye , which had beautiful art from the 15th to the 18th century. Tonight, we’ll go out to dinner. Nice day being together.
About six months ago, I decided to get off social media. I wasn’t particularly active anymore, but I did a lot of scrolling, mostly on Threads and a little on X. I rarely went on Facebook, and I never made the transition to the more visually-oriented platforms like Instagram much less Tik-Tok. So I was already mostly gone, but I decided to stop entirely. I removed the apps, and read only my…
Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein may be right about some things in Abundance , but their belief in nuclear power is not one of them. Michael Shuman on Substack does a great job dismantling their arguments in “ Nuclear ‘Abundance’ is Bunk. ” McKibben and Shuman are right: the future is solar and wind.
Thoughts? My first was that Zisek sees life as a fight, which I wouldn’t subscribe to. My second was that escape from the self is an odd goal.
“I think of Whitman and Melville, in their relation to the contemporary United States, as our resource akin to Isaiah’s prophecy: And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. —ISAIAH 32:2 “We have a need to heal violence, whether from without or from within. Our…
I find myself seriously contemplating a complete withdrawal from the outside world, and carefully curating what gets in. Perhaps this is part of the aging process…
Today, I listened to a replay of Ezra Klein’s wonderful interview of composer Brian Eno . While I was listening to it, I was enthralled; after it was over, I realized that one of the reasons I felt that way is that there was almost no mention of politics, and that has become so rare. It led me to really consider severely restricting my news intake. One of the most toxic thing Trump has done…
Michael Rushton’s Substack post about ideas and higher education is well worth your time.
Really smoky here in Western Massachusetts.
I spent a couple hours this afternoon watching a portion of Philip Glass’s, Robert Wilson’s, and Lucinda Child’s Einstein on the Beach . As a director whose main weakness is tableaux, I am mesmerized by Wilson’s manipulation of time (slow motion, freezes, repetition, juxtaposition) and stage space (vertical, horizontal, depth). And for some reason, Glass’s music and…
Man, I am in a real slump as far as reading and writing are concerned. I did, however, finish a very enjoyable novel by Kristin Gleeson called “In Praise of the Bees,” which is set in 6th-century (I think ) Europe. I really enjoyed it.
“Cult of the body is an infallible symptom of a leaning toward youth, for only the young body is lithe and beautiful. Whereas cult of the mind betrays the resolve to accept old age, for the mind reaches plenitude only when the body begins to decline. The triumph of sport marks the victory of the values of youth over the values of age. Note in this context the success of the motion picture, a…
Here’s a short film called “How an Abandoned Shoe Shop Became a Sanctuary for Culture and Connection” ." It’s about Dougald Hine and his wife, Anna Björkman, who have purchased an old shoe store in Sweden to live and have conversations. I found it on the website for their “ A School Called Home .” There is a whole series on YouTube about the conversations they…
Just a quick note to let you know that you can buy my e-book Building a Sustainable Theater: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of Your Artistic Career for $2.49 during the month of July during the Smashwords July Sale. Use the code SSW75 at checkout . Basically, the book says, you are an artist, not an employee – here’s how to make that happen. From the blurb: “This book is…
Yancey Strickler describes the process of getting the Artist Corporation through the Colorado legislature, and gives more information concerning why the A-Corp is important to artists. I hope you’ll read it .
I just removed an old workbench in the garage that clearly was built to survive a nuclear war. insert Chewbacca celebration here
“I think there may be times when it is necessary to withdraw from today’s politics, in order to do the thinking that could make it possible for there to be a politics the day after tomorrow.” – Dougald Hine