Sunday Morning Reading

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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Hands on with playwrights, movies, smart toilets, and a discomforting rooster

Another Sunday. More snow overnight. More shoveling later. The holidays creep closer or perhaps they’re already here, given that grandpa mode has kicked into high gear. Started writing a new play out of the blue yesterday. I have no idea why, but it just tumbled out of my brain on to the screen via the keyboard. Time to share some Sunday Morning Reading. Read as you will, even if it’s on a smart toilet.

I often save the softer pieces for later in this column, but I’ll lead today with David Todd McCarty’s Christmas Means Comfort. Tell that to the rooster.

The world lost a treasure this week with the passing of architect Frank Gehry. Lee Bray writes a nice obituary and tribute. Check out Architect Frank Gehry Who Designed Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion and Foot Bridge Dies at 96.

Samuel Beckett’s Hands is a terrific piece by Rob Tomlinson about, well it’s about Samuel Beckett’s hands and how Dupuytren’s contracture may have influenced not just how, but what he wrote, given that Beckett always begin his writing with pen and paper.

While I’m sharing stories about playwrights, the movie Hamnet is garnering lots of attention and accolades. (I haven’t seen it yet.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent novel of the same name, Hamnet mostly follows accepted scholarship that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while grieving the death of his son, Hamnet. (At the time, the two names were practically interchangeable.) As with most things Shakespeare, there’s generally accepted knowledge and there are always those who challenge it. James Shapiro takes a look at The Long History of the Hamnet Myth.

And while I’m sharing stories about movies, take a look at Susan Morrison’s piece on How Noah Baumbach Fell (Back) In Love With The Movies.

I linked earlier this week to a piece by Phillip Bump called There Are Limits to the Hitler-Trump Comparison. Just Ask These Historians. I don’t disagree with the thesis. I just think it stops short in the way most history usually does.

Rory Rowan and Tristan Sturm write that Peter Thiel’s Apocalyptic Worldview Is A Dangerous Fantasy. Here’s hoping this first draft of our current history proves lasting.

There’s been much talk about all things military recently given how the current administration is tossing away most of what we believe the military stands for as easy as my grandson tosses away toy soldiers. Carrie Lee says The Soldier In The Illiberal State Is A Professional Dead End. I concur. Sadly.

In the wake of the cataclysm that was Twitter, social media is essentially a messy muddle these days with users continuing to migrate from one platform to another seeking some sort of place that feels comfortable enough to share and often discomfort others. Ian Dunt writes what he calls a love letter to one platform with Thank God for Bluesky.

Smart toilets were in the news this week. I actually got to see and use one at a Christmas party last night. All I could think about while doing my business was this piece by Victoria Song called Welcome To The Wellness Surveillance State.

And to conclude this week, Amogh Dimri informs us that the Oxford University Press has chosen Rage Bait as 2025’s Word of the Year. Dimiri thinks it’s a brilliant choice. I guess it begs the question, if we’re angry enough to rage, is it really baiting?

Read ’em. Maybe Weep. Maybe Get Pissed Off. But Read ’em

Blood, some boiling, some cold, but killer writing.

Life on the Wicked Stage readers will be familiar with the Sunday Morning Reading column wherein I share good writing and interesting topics. Sometimes things fly across my radar after I’ve published the week’s column. Three pieces hit and hit hard late on Sunday after the Chicago Bears continued a mysterious, but gratifying winning streak. I’m going to share those stories here, on a Monday. The writing is too hot to let cool, and the subject matter burns even hotter.

Shutterstock 518101168.

First up, is an excellent piece by Will Bunch called The Night America’s Doomed Ruling Glass Gorged On Lamb, Blood, and Oil. Bunch puts the elite on the menu and carves them up with a bone saw.

Next, check out Anand Girdhardas’ excellent How The Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails. A vivisection that exposes what we all imagine.

Finally, read Tatiana Schlossberg’s A Battle With My Blood. A Kennedy family member, dying of incurable blood cancer eloquently tells her story, and ours.

You might think these pieces tilt into the category of just another round of depressing news and commentary. Partly that’s true. But it’s a small part for small minds. I find each of them reassuring. Reassuring that smart people, spilling words like blood on digital paper, can pour out the pain we’re all living through personal pain of their own, and decipher the day-to-day charades even as the current deadly and dangerous game continues.

I’d say the writing is courageous, but that’s obvious. The real courage comes in reading what’s written and paying enough attention to make it matter. Perhaps sharing them around this Thanksgiving week when we give thanks for our blessings with family and friends. Especially those we disagree with.

Be thankful. Be courageous.

(Image from Militarist 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Art matters. If you listen.

It’s another Sunday in this insane world, so it’s time for some Sunday Morning Reading. It won’t cure what ails you, or the world. But there are those who are listening. Listen as you read.

Aren’t You Tired Of Feeling Insane All The Time? Marie Le Conte asks that question. I’m not sure anyone can plug the hole in that boat, but acknowledging that we’re sinking is the first step.

David Todd McCarty tackles The Lost Art of Listening.

NatashaMH recently launched an exhibition of her art. Launching anything can take life out of you, launching any display of art exacts even more of the soul than it does the physical being. But as she says in The Social Life of Art, “art demands resilience, and resilience demands a sense of humor.”

I wrote a bit this week about what Mark Leydorf has to say about The Rise of Resistance Cinema In The Era of Trump. It’s worth highlighting his piece again here.

I’ve been watching the Apple TV series Pluribus with great curiosity. If nothing else, the show echoes Mr. McCarty’s opening to his piece linked above. (Warning. Don’t watch the show with my wife.) Dani Di Placido thinks he’s got it all figured out in What Is ‘Pluribus’ Really About? Perhaps he does. I’m not so sure. I’m also not sure the show’s success or failure relies on figuring it out in the end.

I’ve been linking to some of the goings on at The Kennedy Center under this corrupt administration. Trust me when I say what’s happening there is causing shock waves across board rooms in arts institutions across the country as everyone looks to uncertain and unknown futures with no script to follow. It’s affecting the art. It’s affecting the business of art. It will affect the art in ways we can’t begin to imagine. Janay Kingsberry examines how Senate Democrats Are Investigating Kennedy Center’s Deals And Spending.

Most of the links this week touch on the arts in one way or the other. In a way this tech topic does as well, given that so many want to turn emoji’s into some form of art. Benji Edwards examines the origins of this move back to hieroglyphics with the piece, In 1982, A Physics Gone Wrong Sparked The Invention Of The Emoticon. Art by accident often is the art that sticks.

(Image by Roman Kraft on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Small acts

It’s only business they say. Nothing personal. That’s the way the world works. Well, what I share each week in Sunday Morning Reading always comes from a place of personal interest. That may not be how the world works, but it works for me and I hope it does for you. Call it a small act.

In the wake of the continuing and confounding ICE occupation of Chicago comes a terrific piece by Kyle Kingsbury called I Want You To Understand Chicago.

Follow that up with a ProPublica piece by Melissa Sanches, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba about the nighttime raid on a Chicago apartment building that featured men rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters, and all of the residents emptied on to the streets with many of their belongings. The punchline is in the article’s title, “I Lost Everything”; Venezuelans Were Rounded Up In A Dramatic Midnight Raid But Never Charged With A Crime.

A Nation of Heroes, A Senate Of Cowards by Will Bunch calls it like it is and much the way I see things after last weekend’s actions in the U.S. Senate.

Growing up, I never understood the cliché, “it’s nothing personal, it’s only business.” Frankly I still don’t. It excuses too much that I find wrong about the way the world works. Charles Broskoski examines the personal side in Personal Business.

And speaking of the way the world works (or doesn’t) in the midst of the Epstein fever I don’t think we’ll ever shake, Sarah Lyons points out that the violence in his and others’ actions is something we all live with in This Is How The World Works. It shouldn’t be.

Corbin Trent says We Didn’t Kill American Manufacturing—We Let It Die. He’s spot on.

Mark Jacob tells us How News Coverage Eases Us Into Tyranny. However this saga we’re living through ends up, one thing is for certain. The media has killed any chance of returning to what it once was.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t read of some nefarious business practice spilling out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. Turns out Meta is knowingly leeching off of scammers to the tune of about 10 percent of its revenue. I guess that makes Meta and Zuckerberg a scammer too. Cath Virginia has the writeup with Meta Must Rein In Scammers — Or Face Consequences. I doubt they will.

The Internet Archive is under attack in the same way libraries, media organizations, and text book publishing is. It shouldn’t be. Mathew Ingram has the lowdown in The Internet Archive Should Be Protected Not Attacked.

On a more positive note, Jeff Veen tells us how Small Acts Build Great Cultures. Boy, do we need lots of small acts these days.

To close out, did you ever wonder where collective nouns like “a watch of nightingales” or “an ostentation of peacocks” come from? For many years it was assumed that the anonymous author of this collection of collective nouns was the work of a “gentleman of excellent gifts” written down in one of the first books printed after the invention of The Gutenberg Press, The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blazing of Arms. Turns out the author was a woman named Juliana Barnes. Maria Popova has the story in A Parliament of Owls And A Murder Of Crows: How Groups Of Birds Got Their Names, With Wondrous Vintage Illustrations By Brian Wordsmith.

(Image form Ganesh Narahanan on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Politics, the arts, a little snow, and the end of an era

It’s a Sunday and Fall is homing in on Winter as the first snow of the season hits Chicago this morning. Perfect time for a little Sunday Morning Reading featuring some interesting stories about the arts, AI, and home.

As the first flakes of this winter of discontent fall, two interesting reads highlight some of the chaos the art-less U.S administration is inflicting on the American arts scene, specifically The Kennedy Center. Shawn McCreesh takes a look at the damage being done in The Kennedy Center Crackup.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Higgins reports that the Washington National Opera May Move Out Of The Kennedy Center Due to Trump ‘Takeover.’ I’m here to tell you that while what’s happening on the banks of the Potomac may feel very inside the beltway, the repercussions are being felt in the boardrooms of arts organizations across the country.

The above, like most of our news of late, is certainly not something to laugh at. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find ways to laugh at the incompetent, ignorant and dangerous players wreaking havoc in their wake. Laughter gets under their all too thin skins, no matter how made up or stretched too tight by surgery. Mike Monteiro offers up How To Point At Fascists And Laugh.

NatashaMH, far too young to worry about being old, takes a look at creating art as she nears the mid-century mark in I Don’t Paint For Your Sofa. Youngsters these days.

Art and politics might be an unholy mix in dangerous times like these, but there’s another foul concoction brewing. Adam Willems points to An ex-Intel CEO’s Mission To Build A Christian AI: ‘Hasten The Coming of Christ’s Return.’ If you ask me these folks wishing for these kind of end times have really missed the points. All of them.

Continuing on the AI front there seems to be a bit of weakening in the walls of what most concede is an economic bubble. The cliché is that bubbles pop. Those that don’t, just disappear as they float away. Ben Thompson takes a look at what happens in either case in The Benefits of Bubbles.

Home is where hearts are and often places you can’t return back to. I’ve lived both. Chris Andrei is Searching For The Elusive Feeling Of Home.

With the weather changing and snowflakes falling out my window, there’s a passage of time marker about to be set. The Farmers’ Almanac is about to shut down. Growing up in rural America there were only two publications that everyone I knew received in the mail. It was always a big deal in our house when my dad, who was the postmaster, brought those home. The Sears Catalog and The Farmer’s Almanac. The Sears Catalog is long gone. The 2026 edition of the latter will be its last. Grace Snelling takes a look back and ahead in After More Than 200 Years, The Farmers’ Almanac Is Shutting Down For Good.

Returning to where this week’s column began, the arts, Jack Rodolico’s The Blue Book Burglar examines how New York’s once vaunted Social Register, was not only a destination that social climbers desired to be included in, but was also a hit list for the country’s hardest working art thief. I just don’t understand how the current thieves doing today’s pillaging have it so damn easy.

Sunday Morning Reading

No tricks. No treats. Just thoughts and reading worth sharing.

The frights of Halloween have passed us by, but real life horrors remain and expand. Never had more gut wrenching emotions this weekend than spending it with my grandkids costumed in their bountiful innocence, avoiding what’s out there in a life they’ll one day have to face, but in the present doesn’t exist beyond the edges of any joyful moment of wonder and exuberance they can conjure. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading won’t touch on too much of that, but then again, I think it just did.

David Todd McCarty thinks amidst it all We Can Be Heroes. Making my grandkids laugh uncontrollably makes me feels damn close.

Adam Gropnik visits the home of the poet Wislawa Szymborska and returns with How To Endure Authoritarianism.

Will Bunch says It Didn’t take A Reichstag Fire To Burn Down Congress. He’s correct. It didn’t even take a match.

Some interesting writing on Artificial Intelligence and the Internet this week that’s worth your while, first up Cory Doctorow tackles When AI Prophecy Fails.

Will Douglas Heaven explains How AGI Became The Most Consequential Theory Of Our Time.

Tim Chinenov wonders Who’s Creating The Rage Bait That’s Radicalizing You?

Decidedly not on the Internet Friday night while trick-or-treating with my grandkids, though not in my besieged town of Chicago, I witnessed not only kids howling with fun, but adults who joined in on the fun with their own costumes and decorated homes, some elaborate, some not so, all with love and honoring a tradition I’ve never seen in the communities I’ve lived in. Many families set up in their driveways, some with small fire pits, some with tents, tables full of food (and candy), welcoming all comers to their Halloween semi-tall gating front yards. I also noticed the adults who just sat in their cars and slowly followed their children down the block. The entire experience reminded me of this piece from the summer in which Joan Westenberg says every creator pays a tax while the rest stay spectators in The Unbearable Lightness of Cringe. Pay the tax.

And closing out this week, kudos to both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays for an excellent World Series, which the Dodgers won. Both teams played a splendid series and provided an incredible Game 7 finish to one of those contests you never want to see end, but know it must. Grown men over compensated for incredible talent, playing a kid’s game like kids, thrilling and heart breaking in the same breath. Too bad we don’t have any great, or even good, baseball writers to chronicle the moment these days.

Sunday Morning Reading

Balancing on the edge of a coin

Regardless of the many problems with the Internet, there’s no denying its benefits. One of those is the pleasure of reading stuff I probably would never be aware of without it. In many ways that’s what this Sunday Morning Reading column is about (as well as my life in general on the Internet.) When you read and live life enough, you discover that the trick is always balancing on the edge of the coin that separates the two sides.

There’s comfort perhaps landing on one side or the other, but life is actually in the fragile middle of the muddle somewhere, even if it’s a fine, and increasingly thinner line, often hard to discern.

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First up this Sunday is a piece by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called Fear, Greed, Civic Virtue and the Fall of the Elites. Pay attention to that word “virtue.” As Marshall points out it originally meant “manliness.” The word’s evolution is as tricky as the concept itself.

Follow that up with Ian Betteridge’s The Politics of the Missing Middle.

Ian Betteridge’s law of headlines that says any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word “no.” Steven Levy falls into Betteridge’s trap in his piece, Can AI Avoid The Enshittification Trap? Cory Doctorow’s theory of Enshittification has been a popular topic in this column and Betteridge’s law certainly applies here. For those looking for a primer on enshittification Greg Rosalsky has a a quick primer on the topic in A Theory Why The Internet Is Going Down The Toilet.

While technically not falling under the umbrella of enshittification, some of the ways folks are using AI sure sound shitty. Check out Alexandra Jones’s I Realized I’d Been ChatGPT-ed Into Bed: ‘Chatfishing’ Made Finding Love On Dating Apps Even Weirder.

Things are getting weird indeed. Adi Robertson tells us that The Next Legal Frontier Is Your Face and AI.

Several pieces on the arts and creativity stood out to me this week. David Sparks’ The Inherent Value Of The Creative Act reflects on his creative life and his resistance to using AI for the work of creating, but it helps with his administrative tasks. There’s that edge of the coin again.

Authoritarians always target art and artists first. You don’t need an Internet to discover that history, or perhaps we might if the current forces in charge have their way. Andrew Weinstein discusses Trump’s Campaign To Defund The Arts—and Rewrite History.

Speaking of creativity or rather the other side of that coin, Joe Rosenthal takes on Creative Neglect: What About The Apps In Apple? I mentioned some of this in a piece I wrote this past week.

Speaking of that edge and to close out this week, here’s an image of a Mastodon post by friend David Todd McCarty from this morning.

CleanShot 2025-10-26 at 07.29.46@2x.

(Coin Image above from ABARONS on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Reading for the morning after the No Kings rallies and beyond.

Good Sunday morning. This edition will be slightly different than most. Yes, there will be a collection of links I find worth sharing (and hope you’ll read). That said, most of the links in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading come from an excellent series in The Atlantic’s November 2025 issue from a collection of authors called The Unfinished Revolution.

Yes, that’s behind a paywall. Sorry, not sorry. But this is the Internet and if you’re not already paying for excellent content like The Atlantic, there are a million ways to skirt that restriction. The issue is one worth paying for, if for no other reason to keep it as an archive for future generations. That may prove important one day. I plan on picking up a hard copy soon enough.

The issue is also timely as this country approaches it’s 250th anniversary, and finds itself being torn apart by forces that, suffice it to say, don’t represent what many believe this country stands for, or at least the promise of what it should stand for, even with it’s historical problems and faults.

It’s also timely because we’ve just seen the second and larger No Kings rallies across the country. Given that the founding of this country was indeed the original No Kings protest that kicked off a revolution against rule by a monarch, the timing also feels apropos.

I won’t highlight all of the articles in the series, you should go and check them out yourself. The ones I do link to are ones I found particularly interesting. And yes, there will be other links in today’s Sunday Morning Reading as well.

Before I get to The Atlantic’s links, this article by Garrett Graff, Three Reasons I Still Have Hope For America, is more than worth your time. I agree that there is strength in numbers, but I don’t think the inevitable passing of a leader this time around will have the affect the world has seen historically.

The title of Anne Applebaum’s Atlantic piece, The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark, certainly tells you where the piece is going. Even so, it is more than worth reading and contemplating. One way or the other we are living through and participating in moments that will change the world. We just don’t know how.

We’re dealing with our own Mad King wannabe, so Rick Atkinson’s The Myth of Mad King George draws some interesting parallels beyond their affinity for makeup that I suggest could be similarly drawn behind most of the troubled men who’ve plagued the world throughout its history.

Political and social schisms divide not only countries, but often families as well. Stacy Schiff asks Why Did Benjamin Franklin’s Son Remain Loyal To The British?

Jeffrey Rosen says that insurrection has marred the American constitutional order since its founding. He’s correct. Check out The Insurrection Problem. If you’re not an American history buff, I bet you’ll be surprised.

George Packer thinks we do need patriotism in his piece I Don’t Want To Stop Believing In America’s Decency. I concur with his sympathies, but when the meaning of words like patriotism and decency can get so easily mangled it becomes trying to cling to those beliefs.

Fintan O’Toole asks What The Founders Would Say Now. We’ve imagined, conjured, twisted, and appropriated who and what they and their words are so often, that in my view I think they’d tell us all to either grow up or go to hell.

As most of this week’s Sunday Morning Reading and my own thinking has focused on the issues facing America as a whole, I found former NY Times drama critic Frank Rich’s piece on Zohran Mamdani and the New York mayor’s race fascinating. Not just for his at times surprising commentary on that race. But for those paying attention, Why Powerbrokers Got Everything Wrong About Zohran Mamdani incisively dissects the deeper fissures subsuming the bigger political picture as well.

And to close out this week, here’s a piece from 404 Media about the amphibian symbol that has become associated with our current protests against the administration, Matthew Gault’s The Surreal Practicality Of Protesting As An Inflatable Frog.

Sunday Morning Reading

Everything you can imagine is different, yet it’s the same.

It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday in Chicago. The Cubs lost. (Not surprising.) The Trump regime continues its horrendous snatch and grab policies all over the city (Increasingly not surprising but still terrifying.) Leaves are falling, but somehow they feel dirtier and without the bursts of color we’re used to seeing beforehand. And the world marches on. Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading.

Neil Steinberg wrote a terrific piece about Chicago amidst all that’s going on called What A Lovely Day in Chicago. It’s a love letter. It’s an homage. It’s a snapshot. As he puts it “We need to remember that this is oppression for oppression’s sake, a practice built on lies. The city is fine.” That’s the odd thing. The city is fine. It’s the oppression that’s not.

Timothy Burke’s The News: Reign of Error expands on a piece by Henry Farrell that says that institutions and communities need to coordinate their resistance to Trump. As Burke puts it one of the obstacles is that “the closer that institutions get to one another in character and mission, and the less necessary it is to be competitive, the more that they are overwhelmed by the narcissism of small differences.” It’s an excellent dissection that reveals why some in higher places of different sectors might be holding their tongues while their mouths are agape at what’s going on around us.

Empywheel thinks The Nativists Are Getting Restless: How The Comey Prosecution May Backfire. I’m not sure it matters in the end if the point is do damage as loudly as possible.

David Todd McCarty asks the question Is Your Imagination Robbing You of Real Experiences? Cogito, ergo sum?

I wrote a play years ago about John Brown and Harpers Ferry, one of those moments in American history that we seem to want to forget, yet never goes away. Robert S. Levine tells us Why Donald Trump Wants To Erase John Brown’s Fiery Abolitionist Legacy (and Why He Will Fail.)

There was so much craziness about the Nobel Peace Prize this year given, well you know why. So much so that many of the other awards were overlooked. The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Hungarian author Lázló Krasznahorkai. I have several acquaintances who adore his work and were tremendously excited. I did some reading on Krasznahorkai and stumbled up on this 2011 piece by James Wood called Madness and Civilization about the author. Worth your while.

On the Artificial Intelligence beat, Sora is the latest thing everyone has an immediate love/hate relationship with. But this isn’t about that. Sarah Perez says It’s Not Too Late For Apple To Get AI Right. Frankly, I think it’s too late for any of these companies to get it right, unless “right” is about winning the con game.

Resting my case on that last statement, Alexandra Jones looks into the connections folks can’t make in real life and are turning to AI for in ‘I Realized I’d Been ChatGPT-ed Into Bed’: How ‘Chatfishing Made Finding Love On Dating Apps Even Weirder.”

And as Autumn continues its march, New Englanders Are Fed Up With Leaf-Peeping Tourists Ruining Their Fall, so says Jared Mitovitch.

(Image is a photo I took last Fall)