I'm hunkered down in the Florida Keys for the week, doing some quality family time in honor of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. The porch is filled with Adirondack chairs, water-stained glass globes filled with beach stuff, and it's also the stomping ground of a spry cat, who pops out of the surrounding hedge occasionally for a few sniffs and a behind-the-ear scratch (I'm the scratcher, she's the sniffer).
My dad tells me I resemble Ernest Hemingway in my afternoon chair, though I'm sure Ernie wouldn't be leaning back against a heating pad to nurse his recently strained back, and would be tossing back tumblers of scotch rather than sipping green tea. At my side, a bag of M&M's rather than an elephant gun.
But my world-view is Hemingway-esque, perhaps. Watching the Obama administration gather steam, I am impressed by the way he is garnering the kudos of naysayers like David Brooks. But I wonder if we're really psychically ready for the challenges ahead.
I know that there is particular trepidation in the arts community, and wasn't surprised to see it mentioned by James Wolcott, who is and has been in the thick of things.
I have a larger sense of disquietude about what's looming ahead culturally, the oncoming economic disaster that will wipe out a lot of dance and theater companies, cripple museums, and kill off print publications. A hunkered-down, bunkered-in period of cautious retrenchment smothers creative energies, and art is in what infuses life with meaning and pleasure, takes our minds off of death and paperwork. The recent passings of John Leonard and Clive Barnes underscore this uneasy sense that we are in a season of endings and closings, at the last stop before the train's taken out of service for good.
Appropros of that, I've been spending much time in the pleasureable company of John Leonard and Studs Terkel, not to mention David Foster Wallace. They saw the world as I want to see it, with great curiousity, insight and joy.
November 23, 2008
November 21, 2008
November 7, 2008
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