As I left the theater, having just seen The Tree of Life, a woman waiting in line to see it asked, “How was it?” Awesome! I said, just as another patron declared, Awful! And that pretty much sums up how Terrence Malick’s provocative new movie has been received.
My favorite form of procrastination is house dreaming—that is, hanging out on Zillow and zooming around maps and photos of houses listed for sale. Usually, I’m hovering over New England but sometimes, wanting a complete break from life’s quotidian obligations, and these days there are plenty of them, I’ll travel out West or south of [...]
The reading public rarely suspects the blood, sweat, and tears that go into designing a book cover. Creating a cover that will entice bookstore browsers to pick up the book and visually convey its essence (in a glance) is ultimately more of an art than a science. The fine online journal Ancora Imparo ran the [...]
Luminous Transportations, installation by Jo Yarrington, Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School
What a joy to attend the Inaugural. The frigid cold instantly gave everyone something in common–staying warm–and conspired with Obama’s message: We were one, and how! Everyone in that ocean of humanity knew that the stranger pressed up against us was a source of warmth. I’d say it was a good start.
Author Michael Chabon, a member of Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, describes the critical importance of the arts at this moment in our nation’s history: “Every grand American accomplishment, every innovation that has benefited and enriched our lives, every lasting social transformation, every moment of profound insight any American visionary ever had into a way
