Cultural Commentary
As I see things …
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“The Women,” the War, the Wall
When someone said to Frances McGrath, “Women can be heroes,” those words set her trajectory, landing her on the other side of the world. The main character “Frankie” McGrath joined the Army as an Army Corps nurse because she wanted to follow her brother Finley to Vietnam. From the beginning of Kristin Hannah’s new book, The Women, readers discover how fiction can tell the story of a war that the media and America’s leadership during that war worked to suppress. In her author acknowledgement, Kristin includes an impressive list of research sources. She also wrote this: “In writing this novel, I have tried to be as historically accurate as possible.…
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Looking Up: What Do You See?
Total solar eclipse this week swept across parts of Mexico, America, and Canada, and people from everywhere went to wherever for the chance to see the moon eclipse the sun. The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun and was 400 times farther away from the sun when this event occurred. Scientists do the math. Journalists report this as a cosmic coincidence when the moon blacks out the earth. People interpret this event through the lenses of telescopes, myths, superstitions, horoscopes, and religion. Whether people watched televised coverage, looked through special glasses, or experienced the total darkness of a blackout solar eclipse, “The heavens declare the glory of God,…
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Viva The Las Vegas I Remember
“I would never go there,” the group’s leader said––the person with all the religious status. His remark silenced comments from others. “If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?” Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club I had told coworkers that for my birthday my husband surprised me with tickets to fly to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion. This guy’s comment made me think how easy it is to make wide verbal swipes against people and places. What made him think he knew anything about the…
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Kennedy Assassination Revisited Every Year
Remember and Reflect 11-22-63 Even if you were not alive in 1963 or you were too young to remember that day, listen to the voices of those who were there. Anywhere in the entire country, the whole country felt the shock. And the grief. And the questions. Anyone who remembers that day will remember where they were, what they were doing, as well as what came next. “Presidential assassinations leave a deep scar on our collective memory and consciousness as a nation.” This quote comes from a 1993 book published by Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX, which included surgical details of the injuries sustained from gunshot wounds to John…
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Eclipse: to block out, obscure, or conceal
My daughter and her husband took their kids on a two hour drive to Midland to see The Ring of Fire Eclipse on Saturday, October 14, 2023. I hadn’t paid attention to this solar eclipse, even though the path for viewing was nearby. But then I started thinking about my mom, Carly Simon, and Annie Dillard. Annie Dillard Annie Dillard wrote an essay titled, “Total Eclipse,”[1] which was published in The Atlantic in 1982 and later included in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. Her experience took place on February 26, 1979 when she and her husband drove from the Washington coast to central Washington. Early the next morning…
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A Response to Evil
Life disrupted all across America as people reacted to this week’s shooting in Nashville. Meanwhile, life irrevocably changed for the families of the victims of evil. You and I Must Call Evil by Its Name The Bible does not sugar-coat evil or resort to euphemisms when it describes the evil that exists in the heart of man. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to show how anyone is capable of evil because you and I live in a fallen world. When Evil rears its ugly head, people look for reasons to blame someone or something. In any case, no, no not one of us is right about everything,…
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Diamonds Are Forever and 007
Did Ian Fleming choose the emblematic moniker 007 for his character James Bond, knowing its relation to diamonds? Years ago, watching a History Channel program about diamonds, I learned that .007 ounces=1 carat. The fictional secret agent may not have been named with diamonds in mind, yet the stories Ian Fleming wrote and the character he created highlight Bond’s value to MI6 (British foreign intelligence). The Value of Diamonds “Diamond Cutting: How It’s Made” aired on The History Channel (cir. 2007). The maximum value of diamonds depends on Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat. Cut is considered the most important of the ”Four C’s.” Diamonds are rare crystals, the hardest substance…