Musings on life, the theatre, technology, culture and the occasional emu sighting
Strike up the band
Young kids are great at making noise. If you pay attention, you discover that even while doing so with toy musical instruments (or anything else they can lay their hands on) they might actually have a predisposition to eventually making music. Or at least that they have a sense of rhythm.
Or maybe not.
Saw this lonley little felllow left behind in a grocery aisle. Felt sad about it for a moment. But then I decided to take out my camera, snap a photo, and move on.
Humbugs and humble remembrances
In the run up to the Christmas holiday I revisit this piece I wrote for Ellemeno called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. It makes sense because for most of my life I revisited or restaged A Christmas Carol, or some other Christmas themed show each and every holiday season.
I revisit the piece hoping that things might have changed for the better and that the hard hearted might have taken some of Dickens’ message to heart. Sadly, this year I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. But as I suggest in the piece, that’s true every year. This year it is just more openly apparent. As ingrained as it is in most of Western culture, A Christmas Carol doesn’t seem to have the same power to change hearts that the ghosts Dickens conjured did with old Ebenezer.
In fact these days, I’m slightly surprised that the folks in charge of banning books haven’t focused on this one yet, given how contradictory it is to their aims and careless heartlessness.
I write this a week before Christmas Day, 2025, in what has been a frightening year that presages more frights to come. I imagine this weekend will see theatre’s filled watching A Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, etc… etc…. We can hope some in those audiences will take home a moment taken to heart, if only momentarily.
Perhaps one day we’ll return to a place where the momentary touching of hearts and salving of souls means something for at least the length of the drive home from a Christmas Eve matinee. There is always hope. And that’s what Christmas is about.
As Scrooge’s nephew Fred says:
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
I hope you’ll read the piece. Merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate.
(image from Plateresca on Shutterstock.)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Kid’s gibberish making more sense than our political leaders
This afternoon while sitting and listening to my grandkids chatter in their own language, (at a volume that continues to set off the Loud Environment notification on my Apple Watch, I can say that not only is there a silly, naive innocence about everything I can’t decipher, but it doesn’t matter because I somehow understand it all.
What’s a bit insane about that is it that their gibberish makes more sense than all the words coming out of our supposed leaders, even as they string words together that actually form complete sentences.
Well, except for that one guy who yelled at the country in desperation.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Repeating the good while reminded of the bad
Continuing on a theme after yesterday’s post about conflicting feelings I ran across this interview with actors Colin Farrell and Jessie Buckley. The quote below from Colin Farrell reached out and touched all of those conflicted nerve endings in my body and soul I’m experiencing as I tend to my grandkids while watching the whirlpool that is the world at this moment.
I have mad moments of joy in my life and joy in work and joy with my kids. But I’ve always felt that the common denominator in regard to experience as humans is pain. The one thing we’ve all felt, really, is pain. I put fear and uncertainty under that banner. Not everyone, sadly, has felt joy. And that’s a great tragedy. But I’m fascinated with pain. Every single act of aggression or violence has its root in pain that has become personalized.
I mostly buy Farrell’s statement. As for me, I’ve experienced both great joy and great pain. My always burning inner conflict is not letting the latter overwhelm the former.
These crazy days with the grandkids are full of that joy now that the visits more than the usual long weekend. Certainly when we view holiday favorite movies and continually rewind favorite laugh moments.
My grandson is continually asking me to identify the bad guys (he knows who they are after repeated viewings.) More curiously he’s asking why they are doing bad things or what makes them bad.
I hope like hell I’m giving him the right answers.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Scream or hide?
So many conflicting feelings tonight after spending a few days with the grandkids and experiencing sheer joy and wonder, while in the same instance catching glimpses of all that’s happening around us.
In the wake of “waving arms at everything happening seemingly all at once” I would like to say I am appalled at horrors of humankind.
But I would be lying.
Perhaps my granddaughter portrays it best when she just stands in middle of the room and decides to scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason, or just goes quiet and decides to hide on the lower shelf of an empty cabinet.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Family time
Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week as we’re on grandlparent duty, watching the kids while their parents move out of their house into temporary digs, on the way to moving into a new house after the first of the year.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
We’re watching the grandkids while their parents move from their home into temporary digs, before moving into a new home after the first of the year. We kinda knew we’d need hearing protection.
Even so. Good times.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
These early winter’s snowfall seems to have put the damper on Christmas yard decorations in my neighborhood. But that hasn’t stopped some folks from going all out. This household’s ballsy display is quite something.
Hype masters of the Year
There was a time when I used to buy Time Magazine’s rationale for naming someone Person of the Year. The rationale always was the person or persons chosen had the most impact during the year, whether for good or ill. I’ve changed my perspective on that, long before this year’s choice.
This year Time Magazine named The Architects of AI as the 2025 Person of the Year.
As Time puts it:
This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time. They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.
There’s no denying the individuals Time lists have had an impact. In my opinion, the list leans decidedly into the “for ill” column. You can’t argue that these folk have certainly created a new economy with all of the yet to be fulfilled promises. But, at some point there needs to be something real underneath the hype. For better or worse, and however these promises may or may not be fulfilled, I’d love to be around a few decades from now to see how the ledger balance that describes what good may have come from AI versus what bad things it left in its wake totals up.
But if any or all of the promises come true, I doubt the AI accountants will ever show us that math.
Perhaps it’s the advent of the holiday season. Perhaps it’s that I’m just not that keen on Artificial Intelligence. But I’d rather see a focus on folks who have actually done tangible good for the world rather than folks who, to this point, have only made bundles of money promising a future that may in the end turn out to be what I suspect will be just another unfulfilled promise.
While I get the intention, I also find it darkly portentous that Time includes a “Ask me anything” chatbot that follows you along the webpage as you scroll through to read the article.
To be fair, Time does point out some of the bad things already associated with Artificial Intelligence in the article. There are a growing number of those these days, but eventually eyeballs will pass them by in the same way folks eventually look past the ever present news of gun violence. Those sitting on that girder in the photograph are counting on that.
I’m guessing future Person of the Year selections will most likely be chosen by AI, and will whitewash most of that out of the accompanying articles.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 