All posts tagged: Writing

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

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I watched Solo last night. I like these anthology films, these stand-alone, supplemental add-ons to the Star Wars universe. Solo is the second installment, Rogue One (2016) being the first. In many ways, I like them better than the continuing epic trilogies, now numbering eight in total. The filmakers for these big blockbuster trilogy films are putting a lot of effort into trying to finish playing out the George Lucas formula so as to pull themselves loose from the Lucas strings, but while they are busy trying to sort that out, there are the satisfying supplements.

Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is a Winning Climate Strategy | The Atlantic

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Good reading in The Atlantic on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal. It highlights one of the overarching differences in the political strategy of the old Democrats (Obama/Clintons) versus the new progressive/leftist breed. The difference isn’t so much about policies as it is about how these policies are framed. The new progressive wave is based more on story and narrative, and this makes it an exciting time to be on the left because the leaders of the movement are appealing to something that can inspire a movement. It’s an approach that could win, and that means there is hope.

The midterms were not a bad night for Trump | Cas Mudde | Opinion | The Guardian

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“Whether the Republican establishment likes it or not – and more and more are actually perfectly happy with it – the Grand Old Party is now Trump’s Party. Their fate is intertwined with his. The old conservative Republican party is dead, for now. In the coming two years they will campaign as a radical right party, led by an omnipresent leader, who will define the Republican party for a whole generation of Americans.”

Election day and how is your stomach?

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Trump is hitting the campaign trail, hitting it hard in the way that Trumpty Dumpty sort of way he has, and one of his repeated platitudes is some variation of “I’m not on the ballot, but I’m on the ballot,” also taking the form of “think of yourself as voting for me.” I haven’t been following this election as carefully as I should. I haven’t been well. I’ve been struggling with digestive/gut issues since last spring, and it’s taken its toll. My energy levels have been pretty low. 

A heck of a word

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It’s getting a bit cold in my tent, these September mornings. I wake up, I feel a blast of cold air hitting my face as my head pokes itself out from my cocoon of sleeping bag and blankets, and then I glance at the thermometer next to my bed. If it shows 40 degrees or higher, it’s a warm morning. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to warm Cali weather and Santa Cruz sun, coming in just a few short weeks. But I’m not the only one traveling to California. Our classy Ex-Prex is kicking off a tour around California, as regards that hoped-for “Blue Wave” victory in the November Midterms. However, this is not a political post. It’s about words, and on that count I have to question Obama’s choice of words.

A piece of Alaskan paradise is at risk | Kim Heacox

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I want to pass along a great opinion piece that ran in the Guardian a few days back, written by Kim Heacox, an Alaskan writer who lives in Gustavus, a very small bush community snuggled up next to Glacier Bay National Park. I worked two summers in Glacier Bay, one of the truly special and one of the most wondrous places I’ve been, and I met Kim during my stint there. It’s a good piece and a plea for some sanity: Over the years, I’ve walked many visitors into the Tongass national forest in Alaska, and watched the city tinsel drop from their eyes. They often sit quietly and look around, and for the first time in a long time breathe from the bottom of their lungs.I live here, I tell them.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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On the surface, the novel Beloved seems like literature that makes us more aware of the brutality of slavery — the physical and emotional abuses, the violence, and the dehumanization. It is, all of these, of course, but I think that what sets Toni Morrison’s novel apart, and what has earned her the well-deserved international acclaim she has achieved, is that she goes deeper, to really get under our skin, as it were. For me, reading Beloved made me acutely aware of the color of my skin. This is perhaps as good as it gets, when it comes to fiction writing, because Beloved forces the reader to confront themselves in relation to skin color and in relation to the brutality of racism, both past and present. Morrison does all this simpy by being a great writer, by putting the reader there, right there in the middle of it all.