China Races past America & into the Future

The future is on the Pacific Rim.

I've been hearing that since at least the early 90s when I was living the twenty-something expat life, teaching English in Southeast Asia. The late '80s had definitely put the spotlight on the economies of the East, with Japan bursting ahead technologically and buying up huge amounts of American real estate. Granted, that run became stagnant just as the Sleeping Giant began to wake.

Washington Post writer Fareed Zakaria has always had his finger on the pulse of emerging political and economic issues, and he made a statement with his book The Post-American World, which wasn't as much about the waning of the United States as it was "the rise of the rest."

And no place is rising higher and faster than China. In a recent opinion piece, Zakaria notes "As America fumbles, China races ahead."

Xi is building the future while Trump pushes tariffs and fights the woke wars.

For about a decade, the United States has been comforted by the notion that China had lost its way. After 35 years of astonishing growth, Beijing stumbled internally and abroad. Its leaders cracked down on some of the country’s most innovative sectors, from technology to education, driving entrepreneurs into exile or silence. Its “wolf warrior” diplomacy alienated its neighbors from India to Australia to Vietnam.

That era is over. China’s leaders have corrected their course.

Last month, while President Donald Trump accused nations at the U.N. General Assembly of being hopeless failures and harangued the United Nations for not hiring him to renovate its headquarters decades ago, President Xi Jinping put forward a Global Governance Initiative, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the U.N.’s founding. He proposed strengthening the multilateral system along a series of dimensions, positioning Beijing as the constructive, agenda-setting superpower.

How Bari Weiss Took Over the Media

Bari Weiss is punk rock.

There's really no other way to explain what Bari Weiss has accomplished in the past four years since very publicly resigning her (relatively new) position as an editor for the New York Times. The DIY ethic and fiercely independent spirit with which she launched The Free Press and rode it to a practical coup in the corporate news world is about the most punk-ass thing we've seen in media in a long time.

With the recent announcement from Paramount that Weiss has been named the editor-in-chief of CBS News, the frenzied rumblings of the journalism world have been trying to figure out just how the forty-one-year-old writer stormed the gates of the Fourth Estate and won.

Since its founding in 2021, The Free Press has amassed more than 1.5 million readers and $15 million in annual subscription revenue, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s finances. In an interview, Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, called CBS’s acquisition of The Free Press a “strong recognition that we’re in a new generation of media now.”

“What is undeniable is The Free Press built a new media business in a time when everybody thinks the news is dying as a business — and got it to a place of flourishing in a space of three years,” he said.

It's rare that disruptors are so effective so quickly in challenging institutions like the media. When The Free Press first came on my radar, I immediately thought of Arianna Huffington and the Huff Post. However, Huffington had quite a different starting point, obviously, with significant advantages over Weiss in terms of establishing a name and a news site. And, to be honest, I was never a fan of Huffington and her site which I believe took advantage of writers and certainly exploited many of them, making an obscene amount of money while paying virtually no one for the content.

Weiss deserves props for taking what amounts to a newsletter on the emerging platform Substack and turning it into a thriving news site which clearly filled a niche and a gap in the world of online freelance journalism. And with a prolific publishing schedule and podcast, she definitely put in the time and the effort to quickly build and grow her own unique platform. This was nothing short of pure DIY hustle, and Weiss carved out a market where none had existed.

Granted, as impressive as Bari Weiss' success with The Free Press is, the new leadership gig with CBS News is drawing serious scrutiny and criticism, and it undoubtedly should. Weiss is definitely a skilled writer, editor, journalist, and entrepreneur, but nothing in her career yet truly qualifies her to head one of the major news and media organizations in the world. And, while her greeting letter to her new team was certainly appropriate with many valid positions, her continued connection to The Free Press and its incorporation into the Paramount/CBS orbit is rather suspect. 

While The Free Press is in many ways a fresh and valued voice in the media landscape, it is by no means an unbiased, non-partisan, "fair & balanced" news site. The same goes for Weiss herself. And it's entirely fair for anyone to have and promote their ideas, perspectives, angles, preferences, and attitudes. In fact, that is the job of commentary writers, the side of journalism from which Weiss comes.

So, it will certainly be interesting to see what comes next for Weiss and The Free Press. It's definitely been a raucous and impressive ride so far.

Alex Honnold to Free Solo a Skyscraper

Wait, what?

According to Outside Magazine, the legendary rock climber and free soloist Alex Honnold is going to free solo climb Taipei 101, the tallest building in Taiwan, and once the tallest in the world.

Alex Honnold—yes, Mr. Free Solo himself—will star in a two-hour live TV show on Netflix in 2026, during which he will scale the tallest skyscraper in Taiwan (gulp) without any safety ropes. Yep, Honnold will go buildering on a very tall building on live TV, and he will do it while adhering to the risky climbing style that made him famous. According to a news release published by Netflix, the ordeal will be titled Skyscraper Live, and it will be staged on a building called Taipei 101, which stands 1,667 feet fall and has 101 floors. In the release, Brandon Riegg, the vice president of nonfiction series and sports at Netflix, called the whole thing an “adrenaline inducing spectacle that you can’t look away from.”

For those of you who don't know, Alex Honnold is an incredibly famous rock climber who climbed the infamous El Capitan in Yosemite without any ropes. It was one of the most incredible feats of athletic skill and human endurance that anyone ever imagined. The feat was captured on film in the documentary Free Solo, which went on to win the Academy Award.

Sneakers - Robert Redford's Sleeper Classic

In the recent passing of "the Sundance Kid," accolades for a legendary career have offered a wide array of choices for some of Redford's greatest roles. From The Sting to The Way We Were to The Candidate to The Natural, I have many favorites. But in the early '90s a seemingly obscure little spy film - a light thriller - came out that featured a pretty stellar cast, and it's one of my most favorite Redford pics. The film, of course, is Sneakers, and it not often mentioned, but also not unappreciated in the Redford pantheon.

Redford’s ability to mix Hollywood charisma with human vulnerability drives Sneakers. After its place setting opening, Sneakers follows Martin’s team as they’re coerced by what appear to be NSA agents into stealing a secret codebreaking device from a brilliant mathematician (Donal Logue, back when he could be cast against type). Along with help from Martin’s sometime girlfriend Liz (Mary McDonnell), the team attempts their goal by duping a gullible scientist (Stephen Tobolowsky), getting pulled further into post-Cold War intrigue and coming face-to-face with a surprising mastermind (Ben Kingsley).

At the time, some viewers complained that Sneakers failed to challenge Redford, that it just asked him to repeat beats from his ’70s paranoid movies. However, with two decades of age on him, Redford was even more equipped to balance his charisma with humanity. As thrillers of the era grew more slick, with big stakes and fancy technology—Enemy of the State, Mission: Impossible, The Long Kiss Goodnight—Redford’s ability to ground Bishop and his wacky pals made Sneakers stand out all the more.

Sneakers never stops insisting that Martin has remarkable hacking skills, that he’s fundamentally a good man against powerful forces. And Redford can embody those admirable traits. But throughout the film, Redford finds ways to keep Martin human: the way his shoulders slightly drop when Liz reminds Martin that he messed up her relationship, the tightening in his jaw as Martin waits to learn if his friends will take on a risky job that would clear his record, the slight lean back when Martin realizes the mastermind’s identity.

As Sneakers repeatedly shows, Robert Redford was a movie star, remarkably handsome and blessed with endless charisma. But by pairing him with oddball character actors and having him play a real person in a heightened story, Sneakers also proves that Redford was a proper actor, able to remain a human being, even when idolized on screen.

Stick, a heartwarmingly funny golf story

Owen Wilson just amuses me. 

Whether he's playing a beach bum in the Elmore Leonard-inspired The Big Bounce from 2004 or playing along with buddy Vince Vaughn in the huge hit Wedding Crashers, Wilson seems to always being playing his stock "awh shucks character," and yet the charm never fails to make me smile.

With his most recent role playing a washed-out professional golfer, he entertains with a limited comedy series The Guardian is calling "the Ted Lasso of golf."

I’ve never met a golfer in real life. I’ve always assumed I’m the wrong demographic – perhaps in terms of age, or class or at least tax bracket – or perhaps my lack of athleticism is so aggressive that it has prevented me from becoming friends with anyone with even the mildest sporting proclivity for all my life. Instead, I have essentially taken Mark Twain’s word for it that golf is a good walk spoiled, and gone about my days.

Now, however, I think golf may be the spoiler of a good new comedy drama. Stick, it’s called – a deadening name – and it stars Owen Wilson as washed-up golf pro Pryce Cahill. He had a televised meltdown during a tournament at the peak of his career (“He triple-bogeyed his entire life”) and is now reduced to selling golf kit, giving lessons to rich old ladies and hustling for cash in bars. He is also going through a divorce, and still living in the former marital home that his wife Amber-Linn (Judy Greer) – with whom he is still on good terms, bound as they are by a shared sorrow – now wants them to sell.

A golf course can make "fore" some great comedy going back to such classics as Caddyshack and Tin Cup, and while the mentor-prodigy can be a tired and cliched formula, Stick manages to stay fresh and clever and ultimately entertaining, especially with a great turn from Marc Maron as the wise, loyal, and sardonically jaded sidekick.

A Pynchon Primer, or speaking of conspiracies

Well, he's done it again.

The master of the truly inexplicable yet compelling novel of postmodern weirdness, Thomas Pynchon has just released upon the literary and pop culture world his ninth novel. Still blowing our minds at the age of eighty-eight, Pynchon's latest novel Shadow Ticket is  a detective novel featuring "criminal cheesemongers, Jazz Age adventuresses, Hungarian magicians," and according to Washington Post books writer Jacob Brogan it is "bonkers and brilliant fun."

I was first introduced to Pynchon during my undergrad years in a contemporary novel class where we read the reasonably accessible Pynchon novella The Crying of Lot 49. I wish I knew enough then to really appreciate what the teacher was offering. For, it was nearly a decade later in grad school that my cohort read and literally devoured V.. Some of the discussions are still rattling around my head. And I appreciated the class because, like most, I would never have truly understood what Pynchon was doing without multiple viewpoints.

Which leads me to this excellent Pynchon Primer put together by New York Times critic-at-large A.O. Scott.

Since the 1960s and ’70s, when he made his name with “V.,” “The Crying of Lot 49” and the 900-page, National Book Award-winning “Gravity’s Rainbow,” Thomas Pynchon has been tagged with various highfalutin epithets: experimental writer, postmodernist, systems novelist. Gore Vidal, writing in The New York Review of Books in 1976, assigned Pynchon to the “R and D (Research and Development)” wing of contemporary literature. For Vidal, the opposite of R&D was R&R — the kind of fiction people might read for pleasure.

Nearly 50 years and five novels later, we can say that Vidal was half right. While Pynchon is properly celebrated as a formidable literary innovator, he is less often recognized as a great entertainer, a master of R&R. His books are challenging, mind-blowing, precedent-shattering — all of that, yes. They’re also a lot of fun.

 

Is the PRC monitoring this blog?

So, ... not to sound too conspiratorial or anything, but after I blogged about the two new films spotlighting Taiwan and its struggle with Chinese intimidation, the traffic to this blog plummeted by 90%.

So, perhaps I should have titled this: "Is the PRC blocking access to this blog?"

I mean, I have to be honest in that when I was writing the blog post about the film Invisible Nation and the new Netflix series Zero Day Attack, I did pause for a moment wondering if posting about Taiwan and two films that the PRC definitely does not like could possibly affect my blog traffic. 

While my traffic fluctuates a lot, and this is not a widely read blog by any stretch, the numbers had been quite good the past couple months. And it's not news to anyone that the PRC's digital surveillance program and bots are vast. 

But, I figured, ... come on. A Teacher's View is a small teacher's blog, and news of the Taiwan films is already out there. 

And, yet ... traffic is way down.

REM touring again? In 2026

Released in 1986, Life's Rich Pageant, is a pivotal REM album, and it is in many ways the breakthrough work for the legendary Athens band who had ruled college radio for many years, starting with the release of Murmur in 1983 (or for the true believers Chronic Town, the EP released in 1982). 

LRP was somewhat of a new direction for the band, as Mike Mills noted a desire to move out of its murkier sound, and with singles like "Fall on Me" and "I Believe," mainstream listeners got a first taste of Michael Stipe lyrics they could actually understand. 

Now, with the 40th anniversary of the LP that many considered one of the most important releases of the 1980s, especially in the alternative rock world that was emerging, there is a tribute tour lining up to celebrate LRP with a concert performance of the album in its entirety. So, are the boys from Athens reuniting for a reunion tour?

Of course not.

One key reason REM is the iconic band it is, is because it ended its run as gracefully as any band has ever done and has remained true to its commitment to never tour again. For, as Peter Buck explained on 60 Minutes, "It would just never be as good."

However, fans can experience a great show celebrating the album with the tour from Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy, who have true musical chops, a great reputation as performers, and experience putting on shows of an REM album that are so inviting sometimes the band itself shows up and joins the party.

Scrubs is Coming Back

"Paging, Doctor Cox. J.D. and Turk are back."

For several years in the early 2000s, Scrubs was one of the smartest, funniest, timeliest, and at the same time occasionally most poignant situation comedies on television. In fact, I find the first three seasons to nothing short of brilliant. And, like several other shows of that era, Scrubs was the vehicle for access to some incredible indie music. In fact, I'm sure the first time I heard "New Slang" by the Shins was in an episode. (And of course the song also featured in Zach Braff's wonderful indie film Garden State).

The series had clearly run its course by the time season eight rolled around. In fact, I am a firm believer that most series peak in season three. However, the show has lived on in streaming, and Turk and JD (Donald Faison and Zach Braff) have continued to live in the TV-sphere by regularly popping up as themselves in television ads for T-Mobile. 

And, now, the gang is reuniting for one more season.

Given a straight-to-series order by ABC in July, the new series will follow JD Dorian (Braff) and Christopher Turk (Faison), who scrub in together for the first time in a long time- medicine has changed, interns have changed, but their bromance has stood the test of time. Characters new and old navigate the waters of Sacred Heart with laughter, heart and some surprises along the way.

While I am not generally a fan of remakes and reboots and rehashing the past and trying to recreate the magic, I am kind of excited about this news. I mean who wouldn't be when looking back at some great moments in a special sitcom like Scrubs.

Taiwan - Zero Day for the Invisible Nation

In the summer of 1992, after graduating from the University of Illinois with a teaching degree, I hopped on a plane with my college girlfriend (Now wife), and flew 8000 miles across the world to Isle Formosa, the "Beautiful Island" of Taiwan. It was one of the best decisions of my life.

I lived for five years teaching English in a wonderful culture of vibrant, hard-working, fun-loving people who have lived all their lives in the shadow of invasion from China. Ironically, I moved to the nation of Taiwan without actually knowing that the United States and nearly the entire world does not recognize Taiwan as a country. I learned acronyms like the "ROC" and "PRC" and phrases like "renegade province," and I came to understand the official title of the island as "The Republic of China on Taiwan." 

Since 1949 when the Chinese Civil War ended with Chiang-Kai Shek fleeing the mainland for Taiwan and Mao Ze Dong establishing the communist government of the People's Republic of China, the beautiful island nation and thriving democratic republic of roughly 25 million people has existed in a state of detente. And when the United States formalized a relationship with Mainland China in 1979, the island nation became an "Invisible Nation," so to speak.

That phrase is the subject and title of a new documentary on Taiwan and its unique precarious political situation. And that release coincides with a new Netflix drama titled Zero Day Attack, which portrays a riveting story of the Taiwanese president faced with an imminent invasion. While neither of these films is currently showing in the United States, they will hopefully be available soon, for it is important for American audiences to understand this complicated issue and to learn more about the wonderful place I consider a second home.

The Colorado Sound -- Great Indie Radio

"Where music discovery starts -- the Colorado Sound."

I still love listening to music on the radio in my car, especially now that I have a roughly 30-minute commute (which I've never had my entire adult life). And, yes, I know most people are simply streaming music these days on Spotify or Apple. And I do have several Pandora stations that are a regular part of my music-listening habit. 

But in the car, or honestly sometimes at my laptop with iHeart Radio, I still enjoy the old-fashioned way of listening to random music selections and discovering new songs and artists. And a big part of my car radio listening menu is a local public radio station at 105.5, The Colorado Sound. 

For the past year, I have truly enjoyed listening to Ben in the morning. It truly is music discovery with Ben -- he has introduced me to so many new bands -- local and national - as well as digging up new songs from old favorite artists. And with features like "This Day in Music History," his show has been a real treat. Ben is now moving to the evening slot at 9:00PM.

And, even though I won't be driving then, I can still tune in -- as you can from anywhere in the world at TheColoradoSound.org.  Check it out some time.

Rocky Horror Picture Show at 50

"Let's do the Time Warp again!"

And again, and again, and again ... for fifty years.

It might be one of the most surprisingly unpredictable works of film, theater, and performance art to stick around for a half century. And as Michael Brodeur explains in this Sunday's Washington Post, it's not going anyway anytime soon.  

With preemptive apologies to any fellow Gen Xers reading this, Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. premiere of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” movie in Los Angeles. (I know, that one stings.)

Your fishnets may not fit quite the same, but “Rocky Horror” — director Jim Sharman’s ribald adaptation of Richard O’Brien’s 1973 stage musical — is the same as it ever was: Boisterous participatory screenings led by “shadow casts” continue to pop off in the midnight slots of theaters around the world, sustaining “Rocky Horror” as the longest-running release in film history.

Craig Finn: a Storytelling Punk Rocker

Everyone loves a good story. And everyone loves a groovy song. And some of us love the musicians who can fuse the two in a sublime synthesis of sound and narrative. I've always loved songs of epic grandeur like Springsteen's "Jungleland" and the Grateful Dead's "Terrapin Station." And, of course, my fascination with Bob Dylan began the moment I first heard "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Tangled Up in Blue."

There are, of course, dozens of classic rock songs that weave intricate tales.

Every songwriter approaches his or her craft differently, and there are, ostensibly, as many ways to write a song as there are songs in existence. But one word you'll often hear songwriters use is "story," which implies a plot, characters, a conflict and perhaps a resolution. Just as one can write a novel with these literary tools, one can also condense it down into a song. Sometimes, it's based on real-life events, with real people and real outcomes. Other times it's entirely imaginary, culled from the minds of some exceptionally creative people. But in either case, it can be fun to follow the narrator as they recount a tale, like in the below 50 Short Story Songs.

In the world of punk and indie rock, however, the intricate nature of a great tale would seem to belie the hard, fast nature of the music. Which brings me to Craig Finn. I've recently discovered Finn, leader singer of indie rock band The Hold Steady, who has an entire catalog of solo work steeped in tales of Midwest angst. And, I recently had the pleasure of seeing Craig Finn's solo work live when he opened for former Husker Du and Sugar frontman Bob Mould. Finn's solo work in which he deftly talks his lyrics over beautiful melodies is a treat, as is seeing him perform live. And I've enjoyed his work so much, I recently bought his latest album, Always Been. 

Usual Suspects - 30 Years Later

 Thirty years ago, an independent film screened at the Sundance Film Festival blew our minds, and it did so in a way few if any films had ever done before.

Who is Keyser Soze?

I can still recall the first time I watched the film, not in a theater but on a DVD because I was living in Taiwan at the time and had missed the original hype of the film. Actually, I imagine quite a few people didn't catch it in theaters, but caught up later when the whisperings began. "Have you seen The Usual Suspects?" It wouldn't go much further than that because no one wanted to give anything away. "You just have to see it," they'd add.

When the film ended, there was a collective pause as everyone sat stunned, still trying to process what just happened in the ending of all endings. And now 30 years later, many of us are still trying to process exactly what happened. Who truly is Keyser Soze? Is anyone truly Keyser Soze? 

Of course, the clear and obvious answer is that, yes, Verbal Kint is and was the phantom all along. However, it's worth noting that the writer and director have both at various times suggested variations on that interpretation and implied "They are all Keyeser Soze."

So we know that Verbal is Soze, that he was the mastermind behind the film’s events, and he killed the other four criminals and numerous other people over the course of the narrative. “Kobayashi,” presumably, really was Verbal/Keyser’s lawyer, although that wasn’t really his name.

But the question to ask is, if the story Verbal told wasn’t true, then what is true?

That’s mostly ambiguous, although we know that the different characters in the lineup really did exist, and die, and the different crimes — the New York’s Finest Taxi service robbery, and later the boat explosion — happened in some form. It would appear that the whole purpose of allowing himself to be arrested and interrogated was to convince Kujan that Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) was really Keyser Soze.

Regardless, I can say after rewatching the film noir masterpiece recently that, unlike so many films and television shows, that movie holds up. It's still wildly entertaining, and it remains "endlessly watchable."

It's National One-Hit Wonder Day

Ahh, the beloved one-hit wonder -- that song which by most definitions comes from a band that placed one song in the Top40 and never had another song chart that high. The Colorado Sound - independent radio - is celebrating One-Hit Wonder Day, and I've heard some wonderful contributions so far, like "Walking On Sunshine" from Katrina and the Waves. Feel free to tune in online and enjoy some great music on a great independent public radio station.

One shout out went to "Come on Eileen" from Dexy's Midnight Runners, and that selection is a true OHW Hall of Fame pick, a true GOAT of the one-hit status. And, Ben from the Colorado Sound is asking listeners to respond online with their favorites. When it comes to music, I can never give just one favorite, so I listed my Top-3:

"Safety Dance" - Men Without Hats

"One Night in Bangkok" - Murray Head

"Rock Me Amadeus" - Falco *

GQ and the New Masculinity, or 125 Ways to be a Good Guy

Since coming-of-age as a teen in the 1980s, I have been a casual reader and occasional subscriber to GQ, more formally known as Gentleman's Quarterly. It is and has been a documenter of men's fashion and style since 1957, and I think it has waxed and waned as a cultural barometer over the years.

Instead of telling our readers who to be and what to wear, in this new iteration of GQ we wanted to help men find those answers for themselves. The issue was like a giant mood board celebrating all the defiantly nontraditional forms of masculinity that had sprouted out of so many different subcultures—and were fast becoming pop. No cookie cutters allowed. Upon publication, the issue had an instant impact. We had recaptured the zeitgeist, which is exactly where GQ has always belonged.

Jump cut to 2025.

We are now, obviously, in the second Trump administration. Life feels…chaotic. And there are op-ed headlines, almost daily, declaring that we’ve swung back to a retrograde form of masculinity. You know: the whole “men can be men again” thing. (A movement espoused by JD Vance and Mark Zuckerberg—two hyperintelligent individuals who also happen to be untrustworthy when it comes to anything cultural.)

At the same time, we are supposed to believe that Gen Z represents a lost generation, and that Andrew Tate (whoever that is) has young men by the balls. To which I say: bollocks.

With its most recent issue, reporting on "The State of the American Male in 2025," the men's magazine is wading right in to the tricky discussion of masculinity. And, rightfully, it's not taking itself too seriously with the hilariously absurdist picture of a whimsically game, self-deprecating Glen Powell. 

When Glen Powell was in his 20s, he wrote Sylvester Stallone a letter. At the time, Powell was still trying to succeed in Hollywood and, as he recently described it to me, at “the point of famine.” Stallone was casting the third installment of his aging-action-hero franchise, The Expendables 3. Powell, an unknown desperate to join the ranks of a call sheet full of over-the-hill action stars, recounted for Stallone the way he was raised. In Texas, Powell said in his letter, he grew up with a gun range in his basement, had learned to fight from his uncles, and had spent long stretches of his childhood trying to find new ways to cheat death.

And, because he all love lists, the magazine is offering up a classic etiquette guide piece with "GQ's 125 Rules for Modern Gentlemen."

This means we’re helping you navigate everything from the modern landscape of online-dating etiquette to how to act in that all-women Pilates class to when (and when not) to pop a Zyn, while offering you a refresher on everything from thank-you notes to how to be a conscientious human being in public to how to act at a dinner party. The result is a list of 125 rules on how to be your best-behaved self wherever you go in 2025 and beyond. Friends, dates, colleagues, and the people sitting beside you on your next flight all thank you for reading.

Always Waiting for Godot

Bill and Ted? Together again? On stage? In an absurdist existential dramady that has intrigued, baffled, challenged, and entertained actors and audiences alike for decades?

Well, I say, sign me up.

The Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot has been troubling the arts world since 1952 when it premiered and while it is "tough to perform" and "impossible to understand," it remains infectiously popular, and as the Washington Post recently explained, "Actors love it."

Famously, nothing happens, twice.

Two men in bowler hats wait near a tree on a country road for the mysterious Godot, and they are eventually met by a third man and his enslaved companion, and later a boy. The next day, the scenario repeats, almost.

For the Dublin-born Samuel Beckett, a self-proclaimed “non-knower and non-can-er,” the spareness and even the meaninglessness were the point. When “Waiting for Godot,” his first produced play, premiered in French in Paris in 1953, it baffled some audiences but would go on to transform storytelling with its lack of plot, existentialist themes and acknowledgment that, if you find yourself standing around long enough, even human existence begins to feel absurd.

The play’s influence permeated theater and spread into pop culture, becoming fodder for sitcom homages and shorthand for discussing the meaning of life or (spoiler alert) waiting for someone who does not come. It’s a “Hamlet”-esque acting feat and a frequent, poignant offering in unconventional places where humanity is stressed to its limits, such as prisons, Sarajevo in wartime and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And, somehow, it’s also pretty funny.

As a revival begins this month on Broadway starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter — co-stars of the Bill & Ted movie franchise, itself a philosophical cult classic — many of the well-known actors and directors who have done “Waiting for Godot” discussed the challenges of the famously impenetrable play, its vast influence and what it all means. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

The New York Times recently sat down with Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, and director Jamie Lloyd for a discussion about how this "most excellent" rendition of a classic play came to the stage.

The Beautiful Brilliance of Brubeck's 'Take Five'

From that opening snare and cymbal to the rising anticipation of that familiar piano riff, the jazz composition 'Take Five' by the Dave Brubeck Quartet is one of the most recognizable, enduring, and satisfying songs in the contemporary jazz catalog. Released on this day in 1959, 'Take Five' is a true classic, and it's a song even people who aren't jazz fans will find themselves tapping a foot or nodding a head along with the beat. 

What is about this song that makes it so pleasing, so indelible, so timeless?

The composition of the song is a true masterpiece in its ease and complexity, and the story of how it came to be is equally satisfying. 

Paul Desmond had written “Take Five” partly as a gesture to the quartet’s drummer, Joe Morello, who wanted to show off his newfound confidence playing in 5/4 time. Listening to “Time Out,” with Morello’s broad rolling beat propelling the band and his concise, dramatic solo serving as the track’s centerpiece, he is in the driver’s seat.

But on June 25, the band tried nearly two-dozen times to get the song right, and still couldn’t. It was scrapped until a session the following week, when Morello apparently nailed it in just two takes. The “Time Outtakes” version is from June, and Morello’s part is far less developed; he taps out a sparse but somewhat obtrusive pattern on the ride cymbal, trying to perch on the end of beat one and the start of beat four. By July, he would figure out how do far more while sounding more efficient.

Digging into "The Greatness of Take Five" can be as fun as listening to it.

By the time it was written in 1959 the Dave Brubeck Quartet had become very popular, so much so that the US State Department sent the group on a tour of Eurasian countries to give them a taste of American culture. Brubeck enjoyed the exposure to other musical forms and decided to do a whole album using some of the unusual rhythms he’d gotten to know on the trip. In addition, his drummer Joe Morello liked to play in 5/4, often ending shows with a drum solo using that time signature. (It’s not clear to me why Morello liked that rhythm so much.) Anyway, Morello kept asking Brubeck to compose something in 5/4, and finally another member of the group, saxophonist Paul Desmond, came up with a couple of themes that he thought would work. While Desmond is therefore usually given sole credit for the music, Brubeck himself was very clear about his own input:

Desmond is credited with composing “Take Five,” but Brubeck says the tune was a group project with Desmond providing two main ideas. “Paul came in with two themes unrelated, and I put it together as a tune and made a form out of it,” Brubeck says. “He came in with two themes. He didn’t know which was the first or the second. He didn’t know they’d fit together. Dopa, depa, depa, dopa, lom, bom, bom, bom. That’s one theme. I’m the one that put them together and said, ‘We can make a tune out of this. . . . 3

The Magic (and hard work) of David Bowie

In 1968, Apple Records sent a letter to a young, up-and-coming star David Bowie's management, or, honestly, it may been to his father, who was a strong advocate for his son in the early days. The gist of the curt letter was Apple has made it abundantly clear that it "has no interest in signing David Bowie to the label" and explains the young artist does not represent the direction Apple is interested in.

A year later "Space Oddity" would be released.

That little tidbit of information - including an image of the actual paper letter that was sent - is just one of many fascinating artifacts from the new David Bowie Center, which is opening this September in London. And, the New York Times recently published a fun, interactive visual story about the David Bowie archives which contain more than 90,000 pieces of Bowie's legacy, from stage costumes to gold records to drawings of planned projects and shows to the infamous Apple letter.

What Was Behind David Bowie’s Genius? His Archive Holds the Answers.

It’s a rock music chamber of secrets.

When David Bowie died in 2016, he left an archive of about 90,000 items, carefully cataloged and boxed like a museum collection.

Now, the public can access the archive to learn about Bowie’s character and methods. Last week, the V&A East Storehouse, an outpost of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, opened the David Bowie Center, which will display about 200 items from the collection at a time. Fans and scholars can also place advance orders to view, and potentially handle, any of the 90,000 items.

Singles: the Film of the GenX Experience

Several years ago, I wrote a reflection on Cameron Crowe's 1992 film Singles. As the classic 90s film passes another birthday, I noticed quite a few posts on social media about watching the film and wondering if it holds up. Of course, everyone notes the incredible soundtrack, and many point out the cameos for grunge bands like Alice in Chains and acting(ish) cameos from Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard. When I posted a link to my piece, the reception was quite positive, so I thought I'd repost here:

As Generation X meanders its way through middle age, occasionally pondering with a distinct sardonic glance who they are and how they got here in a Talking Heads-esque “Letting the Days Go By” montage, they need look no further than the box office poster for Cameron Crowe’s 1992 low-budget cult film Singles. In that image of the twentysomethings profiled in the movie resides the spirit of a generation of young people making the most of an uncertain time by focusing on their pursuit of lifestyle over career and depending on the “neighbors” who subbed in as family. Cliff and Janet on the park bench as Steve and Linda stroll pass enmeshed in a kiss, the image evokes a sense of socialness and community — they are friends and neighbors, bonded by their proximity and hopeful about the decades of adulthood out in front of them. The poster and film offer hope, promise, and above all, authenticity.

When the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film basically coincided with the passing of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, watching the film again brought a hard dose of nostalgia against a reality check of middle age. It was the untimely and emotionally heavy death of Chris Cornell, just a month shy of the quarter century mark for the soundtrack’s release, that led me back to the first and only film that spoke to us with generational authenticity. And, when I’m feeling that generational tug and that middle age nostalgia, I look back to the gang from Seattle to remind me how it once was, and why today looks pretty good.

Read the rest of the story on Medium 

The Em Dash & ChatGPT

Oh, the em dash.

I have long used this exquisite tool of punctuation to great effect, as have so many authors from Dickens to Fitzgerald to Salinger to even the contemporary John Green. At times, some readers and editors have actually pointed out their confusion at what exactly this mark is, comments which befuddled and amused me. 

As an editor of student writing, I was often bemused by students' inability to distinguish the hyphen from the dash, and programs like GoogleDocs were actually a bit slow to adapt coding to reflect the actual look, meaning location and length, of the dash.

Anyway, until recently I was aloof to the apparent issue that ChatGPT has with the em dash. And, while I have accepted the presence and even utility of the AI software, I am quite miffed at the tarnish and shadow the program has cast upon my beloved piece of punctuation. I first heard of the controversy a couple days ago while listening to our composition teacher mention it to the class, as the class discussed an essay from Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed.   

And then coincidentally, the New York Times weighed in yesterday with a feature article:  "With the Em Dash, AI Embraces a Fading Tradition"

There are countless signals you might look for to determine whether a piece of writing was generated by A.I., but earlier this year the world seemed to fixate on one in particular: the em dash. ChatGPT was using it constantly — like so, and even if you begged it not to.

As this observation traveled the internet, a weird consensus congealed: that humans do not use dashes. Posters on tech forums called them a “GPT-ism,” a robotic artifact that “does not match modern day communication.” Someone on an OpenAI forum complained that the dashes made it harder to use ChatGPT for customer service without customers catching on. All sorts of people seemed mystifyingly confident that no flesh-and-bone human had any use for this punctuation, and that any deviant who did would henceforth be mistaken for a computer.

Those deviants were appalled, obviously. I am one;

The Atlantic Gives Free Access to all Public High Schools

In great news for schools, for education, for research, for the free exchange of ideas, for corporate altruism and philanthropy, The Atlantic announced yesterday that all public high schools will be give 100% free digital access to the magazine and its nearly 140 years of archives.

I am tremendously excited about this new offering, and I have already signed up the library-media center at the high school where I work. The Atlantic is an exceptional resource for long-form journalism, and the archives are an opportunity for students to explore criticism and essays reaching back to the time of Henry Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists. 

Thank you to the ownership and editorial team of this esteemed institution of the Fourth Estate. 

Starting today, The Atlantic is offering every public high school in the United States free digital access to its journalism and 168-year archive. All public high schools and districts can register with The Atlantic to give their students, teachers, and administrators unlimited access to TheAtlantic.com while on campus at no cost: all articles, full magazine issues, podcasts and audio articles, Atlantic Games, and the complete archive.

The Atlantic is already widely used as a teaching resource and read by millions of educators and students––and its archive contains landmark essays from many of history’s greatest writers and thinkers. This new offering removes financial and technical barriers for public high schools and introduces The Atlantic’s journalism to new generations of readers. Since launching an academic group subscription in July 2023, The Atlantic has enrolled more than 200 colleges, universities, and high schools in this program, reaching more than 1.2 million readers.

Foggy Sunrise

It was a cool, kind of spooky, almost ethereal sunrise on the eastern plains of Colorado this morning with a bright sunrise backlighting a thick, mysterious blanket of fog.

Images of the horses and cows lazily grazing, at ease with the natural phenomena all around, peppered the landscape of rolling hills and small bodies of water. 

My morning drives to my position as a high school librarian almost always makes me smile, giving hints and glimpses of the southern Illinois landscape where I grew up.

Sunrise Lightning

As I drove to work this morning, out Hwy14 across the eastern plains of Colorado, I saw the most unusual scene. It was a reasonably sunny horizon, as the sun peaked through some remaining clouds up high. I noticed a bit of virga, streaming down, a phenomenon I always find interestingly beautiful. And, then the sky lit up with an impressive ground strike. Aren't they always though?

It was close enough, though I couldn't hear the thunder. Several more times as the sky brightened, I witnessed a few more bolts and even caught a bit of the thunder as a few unnervingly large raindrops splattered my windshield. It was a most interesting weather event, and reminded me of how, growing up in the Midwest, I always anticipated and sort of reveled in watching storm clouds build on the horizon and roll in with calm but riveting spectacle. 

Exploring Two Sides of Murakami

My wife is an avid fan and reader of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, and while I have tried to get into his book Norwegian Wood a few times, his work has just never quite grabbed me as a reader. And, yet, currently I find myself immersed in two of his works, and I am intrigued. 

I began by delving into his 1200 word opus 1Q84, which is a fascinating play on George Orwell's masterpiece of dystopian political literature. Murakami's work is set in Tokyo and follows two distinct and divergent storylines which seem destined to collide. The high school library where I work has not one but two copies, which I found rather surprising. And I opened one up earlier this year during the times that I'm on the floor, casually monitoring student behavior. During these times, I've slowly read several books, a few pages at a time. I figured I could be through 1Q84 by the end of the year.

I am also reading one of Murakami's two forays into non-fiction, What I Think About When I Think About Running. Murakami is a long-time distance runner, and I got to talking about the book when I discussed Chris McDougal's Born to Run with a colleague who is a runner and a reader. I was familiar with Murakami's title, and I was actually kind of intrigued by the idea. So, I picked it up a copy and have enjoyed the calm meditative prose. 

So, that's me this week -- looking at two sides of Murakami.

Gatsby at 100 ... from Myrtle's View

A leading contender for "the Great American Novel," Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby turns 100 years old this year, and while there are undoubtedly many writers, professors, artists, and critics weighing in on this anniversary, I am particularly intrigued by a clever retelling of the story from Colorado-based writer Allyson Reedy. Known primarily as a food writer, Reedy has surprised me with news of the upcoming release of Mrs. Wilson's Affair, the story of Gatsby from the perspective of ill-fated Myrtle Wilson. 

It's a fun conceit to take classic stories and re-imagine and re-tell them from alternative views. One of the best, of course, is Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. And another exceptional re-telling was Percival Everett's James, the story of Huck Finn from Jim's perspective, which went on to win the National Book Award.

Son Volt's "Trace" & the rise of Alt-Country Indie Folk

30 years ago a nearly perfect album was made that defined the birth and rise of alt-country, indie folk.

Music writer, fan, and real historian, Steve Hyden recently reflected on The Quiet Legacy Of Son Volt's "Trace" , and I truly love this line: “Alt-country” refers specifically to the generation of ’80s punks and indie rockers who picked up acoustic guitars and wrote songs about small-town drunks."

While I was living abroad at the time of its release and probably didn't discover it for a few years, Son Volt and the alt-country/indie folk rob vibe that it played a prominent role in establishing has a special place in my heart, having grown up in southern Illinois not far from Belleville where Uncle Tupelo formed. 

I can still recall sometime in the summer of 1990 when my mom handed me a copy of the groundbreaking, genre-defying "No Depression."  Amusingly, it was a preview copy, I believe, sent to the newspaper where she was a lifestyle writer and features editor, and the CD had been sent to the paper for a review. I truly wish I still had the copy.

Thoreau Leaves Walden Pond ... Again

For the second time in nearly two-hundred years, Henry Thoreau has left Walden Pond. This time his stay was closer to twenty-six years, unlike the roughly two years Thoreau spent there from July 4, 1845 to September 1847. Of course, I'm speaking of "Henry Thoreau," as played by historian Richard Smith of Concord, MA. 

The New York Times profiled this "Thoreau" in a lovely reflection, fitting of a life spent living a Transcendentalist experience in Walden Woods -- A Thoreau Impersonator Bids a Fond Farewell to Walden Pond:  After 26 years in character as the 19th-century transcendentalist writer, Richard Smith is hanging up his straw hat.

This is a great story, and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Richard Smith this summer at the Thoreau Society's Annual Gathering in Concord. Richard is truly a great guy, a talented historian, and a true Thoreauvian. 

A bearded man in a waistcoat and tall straw hat emerged from a cabin on Walden Pond and faced a group of people wearing shorts and sunglasses. They were curious about his solitary life in the woods.

They addressed him as Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century transcendentalist writer, but they were speaking to Richard Smith, a historian who has been Walden Pond State Reservation’s resident Thoreau impersonator since 1999.

Enjoy the rest of the story at the New York Times.

GenZ living its Parents' GenX life

In a new piece of commentary, which seems to somewhat masquarade as policy analysis and reporting, writer Alice Lassman informs us that Gen Z is Forcing Us to Rethink the American Dream | TIME

Lassman's online profiles describe her as a "policy expert with a focus on the global economy and gender." As a former high school teacher and writer who has done a fair bit of writing about Generation X, beginning with my master's thesis which analyzed work, life, and culture in the novels of Douglas Coupland, I key in on generational stories about Gen X and its offspring in Gen Z. And I often view writing about both with a fair amount of skepticism. For example, this line:

"America has never reckoned with a generation unwilling to blame themselves for the failure of its Dream. Gen Z might be the first to reject these goalposts, but they likely won’t be the last. This fracture should be alarming for a nation whose identity rests on the idea that even if you don’t make it, your children might—so long as you work hard."

I immediately took a double take on the idea that "America has never reckoned with a generation ..." For, the subsequent descriptors Lassman makes are the exact characterization made of Generation X in the 1990s. Like, a textbook reiteration of the exact same commentary made of the parents of Gen Z. 

Generation X was the "Nation at Risk," the first generation predicted and expected to have a lower standard of living than its parents. Gen X was the group that heard endlessly about but rejected its parents story of corporate loyalty and a respectable retirement, and the first that chose, and often had no choice but to choose, "lifestyle over career." The recession of the 1990s, the downsizing of factory populations, the off-shoring of jobs, the rise of contract or "gig work" that lacked benefits and security but was housed in the same companies that once employed Boomers and Silent Generationers for a lifetime, ... all these factors played a prime role in Xers quickly souring on and losing faith in the American Dream.

Heck, this was the first generation that grew up suspicious of societal institutions like government, education, and church, and it was a group who watched a president resign in disgrace as the US military withdrew from a decades long military quagmire. 

So, I have to say, I don't think Lassman is much of a policy expert and certainly not one who has done any significant research into her parents' generation, the parents of Gen Z.

What Literature Can Do

A student is writing a piece about literature and the impact it can have on individuals and beyond. Specifically, she is asking people about favorite books, the personal impact of such books, and ideas about "the weight a book can carry." And two particular books and quotes came to mind.

When Abraham Lincoln met Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, he supposedly said, "So, you're the lady whose book started this war."

And, when Upton Sinclair was interviewed about the success and impact of his book The Jungle, he responded, "I aimed for the country's heart, and I hit its stomach."

David French & GenX Parenting

Columnist David French poses an interesting and important question in his recent New York Times column:  "How Did the Latchkey Kids of Gen X Become the Helicopter Parents of Gen Z?"

It's not unreasonable to suggest that parents of a certain age should be a bit less obsessive about micromanaging every detail of their children's lives. And, to be clear, the current generation of parents did not invent the idea of helicoptering in the child rearing game. That's reserved for the Baby Boomers who coddled their Millennial offspring to ridiculous and unprecedented degrees. Subsequently, anyone with much experience with the youngest of young people these days might suspect that the Boomers' parenting was not particularly effective in that Millennials are specifically bad at the parenting game. 

Granted, all this talk of generational trends and inclinations is obviously greatly overgeneralized. There are effective and ... pathetic parents at all ages in all eras. I wrote about GenX and the parenting game five years ago, though I had a different view than French. In fact, my piece suggests that "GenX Parenting" is the opposite of helicopter parenting. Of course, that view also implies that the very concept of "Generation X," at least in the manner that sociologist Paul Fussel and writer Douglas Coupland used it, is more about an attitude and lifestyle choice as opposed to an age range.

Gen X parents don’t hover, they don’t helicopter, and they certainly don’t snowplow. However, they are neither aloof nor disengaged. Generational writer and sociologist Neil Howe has termed Gen X parents “Stealth Fighter Parents.” They are aware and involved in the lives of their children, choosing where and when and how much. If an issue “seems below their threshold of importance,” they will let it go, “saving their energy” and probably their nerves. But if the situation “shows up on their radar … they will strike, rapidly and in force, and often without warning.” The target might be their kids’ friends or their teachers or a neighbor, or most likely the kids themselves. Gen Xers are post-9/11 “security moms” and hands-on dads. And our kids, the neXt generation, share our pragmatic, somewhat jaded, and pessimistic view of society while also being rather attentive to themselves, like Xers who had to be while we let ourselves in to the houses after school and fixed our own snacks while waiting for our parents to get home. They are woke, and to borrow from David Bowie (and John Hughes) “quite aware of what they’re going through.” That’s the scoop on Gen Z, a derivative nickname for Xer’s kids, who are out, open, authentic, transparent, and inclined to change the world themselves rather than wait for their elders.

Labor Day -- New Year's in the Fall

It's Labor Day, or what some of us like to call "New Year's in the Fall." 

Any day is a new opportunity for reinvention and a fresh start. And, this year seems kind of apropos with Labor Day falling on September 1, and the first of the month also falling on a Monday.

Here's a reflection from September of '22 about the idea of reinvention and new year's and "spring" cleaning and making a fresh start to, as Thoreau said, "advancing confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavoring to live the life you have imagined."

Write the Power, No. 2 -- The Voice of Freedom

 I recently finished a second piece in the Write the Power series. This version with Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Sojourner Truth, and Public Enemy is actually the first idea I had envisioned for the theme. This one is subtitled "The Voice of Freedom" -- mixed media collage on canvas with acrylic and paint pen. I like the way the script worked out on this one, just playing around with letters.

 

Punk Rock and Beyond

Henry Thoreau's essays, Walt Whitman's poems, and Huckleberry Finn's narrative are all proto-punk -- precursors to punk rock, punk philosophy, and punk culture. In fact, when Huck declares, "All right, then, I'll go to Hell," he utters one of the most punk rock lines in all of American literature. 

That thinking, of course, requires understanding punk beyond the stereotypes of spiked hair, mosh pits, and ferocious three-chord downstrokes. Moving punk beyond the music has been asserted and explored by musicians, artists, writers, critics, and scholars almost since its inception. From Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces to Craig O'Hara's Philosophy of Punk to Greg Graffin's "Punk Manifesto," punk is as much about attitude and intent as it is about volume and pace in music.

Moving punk "beyond the music" is at the heart of the new book Punk Beyond the Music: Tracing Mutations and Manifestations of the Punk Virus from long-time punk and American culture scholar Iain Ellis of the University of Kansas. Ellis' knowledge and scholarship is vast, and the work is informative while also being immediately accessible for readers of all familiarity, or no familiarity, with punk.

Not the Summer of George

If you're a Seinfeld fan, you likely remember the episode where George received a severance package from one job in late spring and has a new job that doesn't begin until early fall. He has the entire summer off, which he declares "The Summer of George," making plans to do all the things he never has time to do. He says, "I might read a book." Instead, he purchases a Lazy Boy recliner with a built-in fridge and proceeds to waste away the summer watching television (ultimately atrophying his body so much that when he falls, he spends the rest of the time in traction -- "It was supposed to be the Summer of George!")

As educators who have always had summers off, my wife and I often joke about the Summer of George when we make plans. We ironically use the phrase because we actually do quite a bit, even as we do enjoy the time off and the much-appreciated relaxation. This summer was truly the intended "Summer of George," and I've been meaning to post about the highlights. While I've been working a lot this summer on the Walden Punk Project, there were many great adventures.

We began the summer with a week in St. Maarten, staying on the Dutch Side at the Divy Little Bay Beach Resort near the port of Philipsburg. While Aruba is our happy place, we decided to branch out a bit, and with St. Maarten, we were not disappointed. The best part of Divy is the beautiful half-moon bay that provides for excellent swimming and snorkling. More on that later. 

Following a week on the island, we returned to the Washington, DC, metro area and did some exploring around the Chesapeake Bay region. With our daughter in college and close family in DC, and our son just up the coast in New York City, we are planning a move to the East Coast, and we took advantage of the time to scout out potential areas to move. We hit Baltimore, Wilmington, Philly, the Eastern shore towns of Chestertown and Easton, and finished up in Annapolis. It was all delightful, with Baltimore and Annapolis winning our hearts.

We also spent about a week in Boston, while I attended the Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society out in Concord, and we rounded out the summer with a week in Paris. The primary reason of the Paris trip was a trip to the Louis Vuitton Foundation for a once in a lifetime art event -- the career retrospective on David Hockney, featuring more than 400 of his works gathered from museums and private collections around the world. It was a sublime art experience, and as an added bonus, we just happened to being staying in the Montmartre neighborhood where the final stage of the Tour de France came through.

It was all and all a wonderful "Summer of George."

Write the Power - Thoreau Society Annual Gathering

 

In the essay “In Wildness is Thoreau,” scholar Lewis Leary calls Thoreau “... a revolutionary of absolute faith … who started a one-man revolution, which has overturned worlds – not through what he did, but through what he wrote.”

That’s the spirit of my piece “Write the Power, No. 1 – Thoreau,” a mixed media collage which began serendipitously as I sat on the couch listening to music while reading, writing, and researching my idea to synthesize the worlds of Henry Thoreau and punk rock. The phrase “write the power,” stems from the 1980’s Public Enemy hip hop anthem “Fight the Power,” and I envisioned a power salute fist holding a pencil. Both punk rock and hip hop can be considered cultural and political revolutions of a sort, and a cultural revolutionary is a lens through which I see Thoreau.

Pondering that image of the fist and pencil, I imagined a series of mixed media pieces featuring revolutionary writers, artists, and musicians, celebrating the power of language and the written word. I even imagined variations such as a fist throwing a punch or flipping the middle finger, as I envisioned different writers and artists ranging from Frederick Douglas and Mark Twain to Chuck D of Public Enemy and Joe Strummer of The Clash. But I started with Henry Thoreau who was a true revolutionary, as significant, in my opinion, as any Founding Father, in his questioning and criticism of America in the early 19th century for failing to live up to the promise of its premise.

Scholars Laura Dassow (Dah-soh) Walls and Bob Pepperman Taylor emphasize how Thoreau’s work intentionally challenged America in relation to the ideals of its revolution. Revolution is also fundamental to my Thoreau-Punk alignment for both the man and the movement are grounded in what Walls describes as Thoreau’s belief that “The American Revolution was incomplete: inequality was rife, materialism was rampant, and the American economy was entirely dependent on slavery” [and injustice]. Walls says Thoreau’s “dilemma [was] how to live the American Revolution not as dead history, but as a living experience that could overturn hidebound conventions and comfortable habits.” Bob Pepperman Taylor echoes this idea in his book America’s Bachelor Uncle asserting “No writer has more powerfully portrayed the American betrayal of its own commitment to individual liberty.”

Thoreau was indeed a revolutionary with a pencil – and interestingly he also was a revolutionary pencil maker. His personal innovations literally changed the industry and made “Thoreau & Son” pencils the premier American pencil. That idea is behind my image of the pencil, and the phrase “The Power of the Pencil” is written in a style mimicking Thoreau’s more legible script. The pencil covering Thoreau’s mouth clearly draws attention to his face but also symbolizes that Thoureau did his talking on the page. Granted, at his time, his many essays were delivered at the Lyceums. But the written word enables them to live on long past the night of the performance.

The collage style for this piece and for the planned series blends text and images, emphasizing the power of words. With Thoreau in regards to this year’s theme, collage can reflect both the messiness of revolution and of art while also presenting a mosaic of the complex ideas behind Thoreau’s words, their impact, and his legacy. Graffiti style text is intended to invoke a punk rock spirit, a renegade art form. The power salute fist clutching a pencil resembles a classic tag, and of course, it is a revolutionary symbol used by many protest movements. You’ll also notice in gold paint pen various scribbles mirroring Thoreau’s looser handwriting style, which I display with several versions of his original text, the lower left being the most freeform example.

Background images making up the collage include the cover of the original edition of Walden over which I placed the fist, and the cover of the play The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. Published at the time of the Vietnam War and subsequent protests, it’s reflective of the revolutionary spirit behind Thourea’s protest and subsequent essay known as “Civil Disobedience.” In the upper right corner I have an image of another of my Thoreau artworks which is the minimalist “Portrait of Henry David Thoreau” by Swiss/French artist Felix Vallotton over two Thoreau selections, “Walking” and “Civil Disobedience.”

The cabin in the bottom right is obviously an iconic image associated with Thoreau, and the simple act of building the cabin and living there was a revolutionary act, as Laura Dassow Walls notes in her exceptional biography, Thoreau: A Life. The cabin truly unsettled the people of Concord. I’d describe it as a punk move precisely because it agitated others and disrupted the status quo. I also included an image of the sign and quote at the original cabin site.

Thoreau was determined to be a writer, and he honestly hoped to change the world with his words. Writing is power, and we all remember the origin story of Thoreau’s epic two million word journal – Emerson asked if he kept a journal and he wrote “So, I start today.” In my research I’ve pulled countless quotes which evoke to me Thoreau’s revolutionary punk rock spirit, and I incorporated them in the piece as banners and slogans, and more are painted around the outside edge of the piece.

So, with all that, I give you “Write the Power”

Thoreau, Punk, & the Art of Nonconformity

Both Punk Rock and Henry David Thoreau are grounded in the simple act of nonconformity. Walden, a Life in the Woods is at its heart and in its central thesis an exercise in nonconformity. It truly was meant to be and remains a guidebook for nonconformists. The same is obviously true for the subculture, nay culture, that sprang up around and because of punk rock.

Mike Royko and the Art of the Column

Just a thought: Mike Royko is one of America's greatest writers. Like, definitively a Top 10 artisan of the craft across the board, with no regard to ranking based on genre.

I grew up the son of a newspaper feature writer and editor, and I had the benefit of three newspapers in my house everyday -- The St. Louis Post Dispatch, The St. Louis Globe Democrat, and The Alton Telegraph. And from an early age I learned to appreciate, value, even love the art of commentary and the daily newspaper column. From Erma Bombeck to George Will, I gleaned so much knowledge and insight about the world through their deft knack for language and the concise medium of "the column." And I'd probably rank my favorite columnist of all time this way:  Mike Royko, George Will, David Brooks, Bill McClellan, and Erma Bombeck.

But my highest respect, admiration, and praise goes to the gritty Chicago voice of Royko. 

Write the Power -- Thoreau

In addition to the writing I have been doing with Thoreau and Punk, I have also been working on some Thoreauvian-Punk-inspired artwork. This piece -- "Write the Power, No. 1 - Thoreau" -- has been accepted to the first ever Thoreau Art Show for the Thoreau Society's Annual Gathering in Concord, MA on July 9-12. This year's conference, Thoreau's Revolutions, included a call for art to be be featured in a exhibition which "will focus on Thoreau’s revolutionary ideas as well as personal reflections on revolution in the context of his life and work."

Coincidentally, I had recently produced several pieces of Thoreau-inspired art for another artists call, and so I took a chance and entered this show. While I have long intended to attend the Thoreau Society Annual Gathering, I did not expect to go this year. In fact, I hoped to go once I finished my work and could potentially present at the conference. Alas, I will be able to "present," for the conference has scheduled an artists' talk for the show on the morning of July 11, and I will be speaking about this work and my ideas regarding Thoreau and revolution. My artist's statement for this piece follows:

“Write the Power” began serendipitously as the artist sat on the couch listening to music while reading, writing, researching, and sketching an idea to synthesize the worlds of Henry Thoreau and punk rock. The phrase “write the power,” which stems from the 1980’s Public Enemy song “Fight the Power,” sprang into his mind with the image of a power salute fist holding a pencil. The artist envisioned a series of mixed media pieces featuring revolutionary writers, artists, and musicians, celebrating the power of language and the written word. This piece is the first one completed in what he hopes will be a large body of work.

Thoreau, Graffin, & the Punk Ethos

Clearly, an anti-establishment and authority-defiant approach is fundamental to both Thoreau and the punk aesthetic, and perhaps the most obvious connection between the two men and movements. In a scholarly book length follow up to his punk manifesto, Greg Graffin expanded on the punk ideal with Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God. In it Graffin explains punk’s challenge to the tyranny of institutional authority warning that “If people unquestionably give in to the massive force exercised by the oppressive institution that is the government, they will enable the people in power.” This criticism mirrors Thoreau’s assertion in Resistance to Civil Government about the relatively few bending the government to their will with the Mexican War. 

Prior to Graffin’s book Anarchy Evolution, Bad Religion’s song "You are the Government" had decreed “when people bend, the moral fabric dies,” and that concern is the essence of Thoreau’s abolitionist stance and the development of his most significant and enduring political work in the art of “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau’s original thinking on government and the integrity of the individual who dissents began as his counterargument to William Paly’s “Duty of Submission to Civil Government” from The Principals of Moral and Political Philosophy. While scholars and historians widely acknowledge the lineage of Thoreau’s ideas running through the anti-colonialist revolution led by Mohandas Gandhi and the American civil rights protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the defiant beliefs can easily extend through the 1970s and 80s with the rise of punk. 

Granted, no one is aligning the historical struggles for abolition, independence, and civil rights with the kids raging in mosh pits during the early 80s. That doesn’t, however, discount the connection of the punk ethos linking back to the ideas of Thoreau. For, when Graffin “warns against blindly accepting the government directives and blindly conforming to their ideals,” he is channeling the transcendentalist concepts of self-reliance and civil disobedience. Graffin, Bad Religion, and the punks of the Lower East Side would certainly “accept the motto that government is best that governs least” and might even agree that “when men are prepared for it, that is the type of government they shall have.”

Thoreau the Educator

In Laura Dassow Walls' sublime Thoreau biography, she describes 1839 as a time when Thoreau's life truly blossomed. Coming out of the harsh economic market facing young people when Thoreau graduated amidst the Panic of 1837, which led to the country's first and most serious economic depression lasting nearly ten years, Henry and his brother opened their school, and he "rose to a position of standing and honor in his community." The Thoreau school was truly an exemplary model of education, extending far beyond the rote memorization of early America's classical liberal arts foundation. 

In a letter to Orestes Brownson, Thoreau had pondered why we should "leave off our education when we begin to be men and women? ... It is time that villages were universities," uncommon schools where citizens could pursue liberal studies for the the rest of their lives, banding together to fund the arts and learning, and make not a village with a few noble men, but "noble villages of men."

Thoreau: the Economist

While Henry Thoreau is often thought of as an environmentalist and a nature writer, based primarily on the reading public's knowledge his work Walden, or Life in the Woods, fewer people see Thoreau through his philosophy on work and economics. In fact, few people think of Thoreau as an economics writer even though the introductory section to his opus, Walden, is titled "Economy." Truly, Thoreau wrote at length on the natural world and man's relationship to his environment, but his retreat to Walden Pond was specifically designed and chosen for him to have time, space, and a viewpoint from which to critique a dynamic and changing economic situation in Concord and America at large. 

In the study Henry at Work (Kaag and Van Belle), Thoreau is portrayed as one who above all else "realized the power of money to warp our lives." Having graduated from Harvard in 1837 during the most serious economic crisis the young nation had yet faced, Thoreau both witnessed the rise of the consumer commercial economy in which surplus was a new concept, at the same time he experienced the dire fiscal situation facing many young graduates. In fact, as Robert Sullivan points out in The Thoreau You Don't Know, young Henry "went to the pond to make a point about work." Thoreau was actually an incredibly hard worker and industrious young man whose talents ranged from innovator of a new superior pencil lead to trusted surveyor of the Concord landscape.

And, "If you think Thoreau as anti-work, that is because Thoreau questioned "why we work" (Kaag and Van Belle). In embracing the natural world and being in tune with, rather than at odds with, his environment, Thoreau even challenged the Biblical notion of the work week and the Sabbath, opining that man should work one day a week and rest the other six. Imagine the views of church leaders and inheritors of the Puritan ethic with that one. Yet, Thoreau was no "do-little," as he is often mistaken to be and criticized for.  While Thoreau explains that his "purpose in going to Walden was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly, but to transact some private business the fewest obstacles," he was working to explore and develop an economic critique.

And despite those stated intentions of transacting private business, "an important part of of Thoreau's experiment turned out to involve basic economic questions: What is the best way to earn a living? How much time should be spent at it?" (Thoreau's Living Ethics, Cafaro). Few people ask these questions, though Henry believed people should first and foremost draw their own conclusions, rather than submit to standards established by institutions. For he believed the point of economics is not how much wealth an individual produces, but what sort of people that work and wealth makes us.

An interesting connection to punk culture, especially in the second wave California bands like Black Flag and Minutemen, is the serious work ethic exhibited by these musicians to simply work on their terms. Because the punk economy was small, most bands lived quite sparsely, often "hand-to-mouth," and that fiscal reality was fundamental to the band Minutemen's philosophy and ethic of "jamming econo," which basically meant doing things "as cheaply and efficiently as possible" (White Boys, White Noise, Bannister). 

FoCoMX 2025: Standout Performances, Discoveries and Memorable Musical Moments

"The streets are alive with the sounds of local music ..."  I was so excited to attend and write about this event for the second year in a row. Life is good in FoCo -- literally dancing in the streets

Every April, the streets of Old Town Fort Collins are filled with the sounds of live music. FoCoMX took center stage once again April 18-19, amidst cold, snowy weather that earned the event the nickname SnoCoMX. Its official nickname is "America's biggest little music festival," and this year's edition featured 400 acts representing every imaginable genre performing at thirty-plus venues across town.

My wife and I joined the annual celebration for the second year in a row, starting on the crowded, slightly snowy patio of Equinox Brewing, where singer-songwriter Michael Kirkpatrick kicked off the festivities with a solo set. The musician whose voice was once described as "an anthropomorphic brontosaurus that has popped out of a children's book to teach kids about the danger of playing with matches" set a warm, welcoming tone with folksy narratives about life, love, community and spirit.

... Read the rest of the story at Westword.com