The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage wiling to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Data’s autonomy is at stake in a taut, character-driven courtroom drama that resists pandering — no distracting fist-fights or space battles. This episode not only succeeds as a stand-alone meditation on the human condition, it meshes narratively with events from past shows and offers affordances for future story arcs at a time when most TV was purely episodic. “The Measure of a Man,” by…
I tell my journalism students they won’t hear me talk about Trump’s policies at all. But I do talk about his interactions with journalists, which I frequently find appalling. Here’s the latest example.
Fantastic performances, powerful writing. 30 years ago when this play had its pre-Broadway tryout at the University of Virginia, I wrote a review for the University Journal. (I just sent an email to the U.Va. library in the hopes of tracking down that review.) Director Marya Sea Kaminski, who consistently introduces herself as someone who “serves” the Pubic Theater as artistic director, has put together a rousing companion piece to…
It was Mr. Trump who used a black Sharpie to mark up an official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map, which he displayed during an Oval Office briefing on Wednesday, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” the official said of the map, which added Alabama into…
The media reports that on an official trip to Ireland, VP Pence will not stay in the vicinity where he is doing work, but his entourage will fly 180 miles away to stay at a Trump-owned property. To respond to public criticism, the Pence camp organizes a media event, where the main speaker is the VP’s spokesman, Marc Short, who says Trump said, “Well, you should stay at my place.”…