The French filmmaker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 76, has made his valedictory statement. The ravishing documentary Legacy, now streaming, is a visual and aural love letter to our planet, the creatures that inhabit it, and the ones (us) who are destroying it. Employing languid footage shot from a hot-air balloon, as he did in his...
Thanks to their proximity to important people everyone knows, unimportant people whose names we don’t remember, “regular” folks like me and you, often have a fleeting opportunity to change the course of World History. Henry the VIII’s chef; Napoleon’s personal physician; Hitler’s driver. With a little help and a lot of courage, each of them...
We knew her for a month before she died in a terrible accident, but Chareze Clamor touched us so profoundly that she may have well spent 15-or-more years, a whole doggie life, as part of our family. She was only five-months. A puppy. She weighed maybe seven pounds, much of it hair. A pure Shih-Tzu,...
In the aftermath of the devastation wrought by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, where thousands died and hundreds-of-thousands more were left homeless, almost everyone I spoke to asked the same question: My Filipina wife — was anyone in her immediate family affected? Everyone was greatly relieved to learn that, no, none of my wife’s immediate...
A daughter has died. She was also a wife and a mother and a sister. She was 41. She follows to the grave a brother, who died in a car accident when he was 18. What does one say to her parents? How flimsy and impotent words seem in the face of these outrages, when the natural...
The remains of my dear friend Ella the dog arrived from the crematorium in a nice fabric-covered box. The ashes themselves were in a plastic freezer bag, which was probably a good thing, since in addition to a fine grey powder there were many pinky-nail-size bone fragments and flakes from the few teeth Ella retained...
Ella Guinevere Konik died peacefully last night at home in her bed, surrounded by family. She was close to 15 1/2. Frank Sinatra once told an interviewer, “They say you only live once. But if you have a life like mine, once is enough.” Ella’s time on Earth was like that. A white-lab and greyhound...
This week I witnessed something I had previously only read about: the sudden onset of temporary amnesia. My friend recently lost her daughter to a brief but devastating illness. She had watched her daughter die. The pain of losing her child eventually became too much to bear, and her brain stopped remembering that it had...
My great friend, traveling partner, and constant source of encouragement, Sandrine Pecher, died Tuesday morning after a nine-month battle with lung cancer. Sandrine had valiantly accepted whatever treatments the medical community could offer, including several different chemotherapies and radiation. Just last week, she told me that new lesions had been detected on her liver, but...
Depending on one’s quotient of Puritanical self-abnegation, the follies of other less disciplined souls often inspire the pensive equivalent of a scoff. Of the fatty we think, “Surely he knows that a diet of doughnuts and fries will only make him more obese.” Of the smoker we think, “Surely she knows that smoking causes an...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Used traditionally, in most Western music the bass keeps time churning out fat quarter-notes based on the root of a chord. Ba-dum-dum-dum-dum. On his addictive new recording Tines of Change, the visionary master bassist and composer explores his instrument’s under-utilized sonic possibilities. The concatenation of squeaks, grumbles, twitters, growls, whistles, knocks, cries, howls, and, yes, nice...
