Inventory

I just noticed how long a lapse I've had here. Rest assured I've been thinking about writing, but potential posts are in various stages of edits. Too many things seemed interesting to me in the last month, which is a good thing. But now I have to get around to finishing up my thoughts in some semi-tidy packaging for posting here. Until then, here's a summary of topics of works in progress:

The passage of what would have been the 100th birthday of Hannah Arendt, and what she really meant - not what most of us think she meant - when she coined the phrase The Banality of Evil - and all kinds of heavy stuff about the nature of human freedom.

The announcement that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged will be made into a film ( I've got the old Patricia Neal * Gary Cooper Fountainhead on the way to me via Netflix), and my adolescent foray into the inner sanctums of the Objectivists. Also included: how I somehow squared this with my burgeoning socialistic views.

George Orwell: we all must read his nonfiction, as well as fiction, from a very early age. If his undiluted moral sense didn't permeate our collective consciousness and make the world a far better place, most of the English-speaking parts of the world would at least write much better.

An inventory of a recent visit to San Francisco, including wondering just why cars appear parked in the middle of the street there, ostensibly for church. Double parking in NYC is nothing compared to this. Plus a comparison the Public Libaries of Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, NYC, and SF. And maybe something about how New Yorkers are spoiled by having so many Great Public Spaces.

Polar Bears are shrinking, along with the polar ice caps.

When We Were Kings (the film) and how Muhammad Ali is, unlike most of the people we so easily bestow the title upon, an actual hero, and why. And how I coincidentally ended up watching Street Fight, about Corey Booker's first mayoral campaign in Newark, right after Kings, and therefore must compare one old school black american hero with one new school black american hero-in-the-making.

My cab ride coming home late from work tonight, during which the young Turkish driver showed me it is possible to be both supremely cynical and idealistic at the same time, and with grace.