Well, I’m still plowing through The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
Personal Responsibility
See This Great Movie about Churchill!
Hurry up, folks, and see Darkest Hour, the new film about the earliest days of Winston Churchill’s leadership of Britain as Prime Minister, before it leaves the theaters! (It should still be showing through the end of the year at independent theaters; we saw it last night at one such place. If you live in the Denver area you can see it there: the Chez Artiste Theater near Colorado Boulevard and Evans Avenue. After the movie you can just walk over to the India Oven Restaurant for a wonderful meal.) If you don’t see it in time, buy Darkest Hour.
I wanted to see the film because of Gary Oldman’s performance, and it’s well worth seeing just for that reason and for the rest of the cast. (Downton Abbey fans will recognize the actress who plays Churchill’s secretary: it’s Rose! But with dark hair.)
Do You Have a “Project Brain”?
The hits just keep coming from Dana K. White, author of last week’s book pick, How to Manage Your Home without Losing Your Mind and of the blog A Slob Comes Clean. Remember how I said that she had me nailed with her description of someone sitting at a messy kitchen table reading about how to clean up her kitchen, when what that person really needs to do is . . . clean up the kitchen? Well, she has another concept that is so, so me: “project brain.”
Do the Boring Stuff
Another great podcast today from Liz Craft and Sarah Fain’s “Happier in Hollywood,” their podcast about life as TV writers living in Los Angeles. I would encourage you to listen to the whole thing. (One instance of bad language very early on, BTW.) Anyway, they have a guest this week, Melissa De La Cruz, a mega-best-selling author of young adult fiction. (Who knew? Not me.) But Melissa’s fabulously successful career came at the cost of a stroke.
A Clear-Eyed Look from the Inside–and the Outside
This book is the third one I’ve read since last fall about our current political landscape. I wrote a post about the first one, Matt K. Lewis’s Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)
Carelessness Strikes Again–Or How I Failed to Show Up for Jury Duty
Well, I guess it’s a life lesson when you finally get around to cleaning off your desk only to find the jury duty notice telling you that you were supposed to be at the courthouse at 9:00 AM and it’s . . . around 12:30 PM. The thing of it is, I did remember that notice. I remembered it last week, and I found it, and I was vastly relieved to see that I didn’t have to worry about it until last night after 5:00 when I was supposed to call and see if I had to come in. It was the old “oh, I’ll remember it” thing. I have plenty of resources at my disposal to keep track of my obligations, including Google calendar and Todoist, but they don’t do me any good unless I use them. For some reason, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, I figured that I’d remember. So I had to do my best to fix the situation, e-mailing
Are You Optimistic or Hopeful? Which One Is Better?
If you follow me on my personal Facebook page (which doesn’t have much of anything personal about me, confusingly enough, since I started it in order to post political articles back during the election), you’ll know that I’m a YUGE fan of a conservative columnist over at National Review named Jonah Goldberg. (Music fans may know that one of Bach’s most famous compositions is a set of pieces called the “Goldberg Variations.” An early ancestor of the estimable Jonah? Maybe so.)
Anyway, this Goldberg has, like everyone else in the known universe and beyond who has anything to do with any kind of media, started a podcast, called The Remnant. The second episode, once you get past some rather sophomoric attempts at humor, has an interview with Yuval Levin, a name I’m sort of familiar with because Levin is a contributor to NR, whose website I check many imes a day. (If you’re a friend of mine through my aforementioned personal FB page you’ll know
Wearing the Iron Pants, Sticking to the Schedule, and Staying in the Chair
I don’t know if the muse is going to show up on any given day, but by golly, I’m going to be at my desk every day from 8 to 12 every morning in case she does.
Flannery O’Conner
Yep. Hard as it is to swallow, the only way I’m going to get any writing done is to sit in my chair and do it.
No Ostriches Need Apply
I’ve said often that I consider Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night, written in 1936, to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. I’ve been reminded a number of times recently of this little exchange between Lord Peter Wimsey and the woman he loves, Harriet Vane. Peter had fought in World War I and been badly traumatized by his role as an officer, having to send men off into battle.
Fuzzy Finish Lines
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about finish lines, especially in how we view big projects and how we think they’ll advance. We look forward, we long, for the day when everything is done. It seems as if it will never happen. And then, gradually, the pieces start falling into place. It’s not one big ta-da moment like a horse crossing the finish line but a succession. There are bumps and reversals and then bursts of progress. This past Sunday, for instance, was a burst. The in-laws were off on a square-dancing trip until Sunday afternoon, and Jan’s daughter and her husband wanted to come over that evening.