The nice lady pulled her full-size luxury SUV to a stop at the curb in front of our home and set the hand brake. It looked like she was parking, but she didn’t turn off the car’s engine, and she didn’t get out. Instead, the nice lady remained inside the leather-trimmed cabin, doing something on her...
As our species hurtles toward extinction, a beautiful documentary reminds us that seemingly powerless individuals on every continent have the power to change the course of history. Especially children. Especially smart Indian children. Climate of Change is the most hopeful film we’ve seen about a situation that often seems hopeless.
Bold prediction: Within a decade, a whole class of societal crusaders will develop and be recognized by the arbiters of culture. They will be called radicals, Luddites, crackpots. They’ll be dismissed and ridiculed. And they’ll be consistently marginalized by those with money and power. But they’ll be right. Their main focus? Harnessing the astonishing energy...
For much of the nation’s existence, India has either been colonized by its European superiors or shackled with cuffs of poverty. Until recently, the average Indian endured squalor and neediness unimaginable to those of us who expend our excess calories at cardio-striptease classes. Even now, as viewers of the urban fairy tale “Slumdog Millionaire” note...
For some time now, a small but vocal group of ostriches — some of whom occupy seats in the United States Senate — have described the phenomenon of global warming as one of the most pernicious hoaxes perpetrated on the American people (as well as other less important occupants of this planet). They say that...
CLIMATE STRIKE WEEK at MICHAELKONIK.com, 9/15-21 Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, explains how our brains abandon us when the fate of the planet is at stake: He says that no one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with...
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…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
