“A dreaded sunny day
So let’s go where we’re happy
And I meet you at the cemetry gates”
For my outlaw father and brother in laws ... Sikh - Mount Everest like tasting notes : We stood at the foot of the volcano; a towering eminence of tightly packed fruitcake and sticky toffee pudding, and gazed up towards the bellowing clouds of pork crackling infused smoke. Climbing onto the back of a giant duck and gripping the leather reins we began our ascent with the spicy smell of nutmeg, clove and cinnamon becoming heavier as we advanced. The ground shook as figs, dates and roasted chestnuts were blasted high into the sky and rivers of molten toffee passed nearby. Sipping export strength navy rum to steady our nerves we bravely continued further towards the summit passing boulders of macadamia nuts, honeycomb and salted chocolate.
Riding a duck bareback up Mount Etna | SMWS via DB
Conversations with René Girard, by Cynthia L. Haven (ed.), reviewed by Chris Fleming at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
What’s Lost When Film Festivals Go Virtual
Festivals can serve as coronations, bestowing status or, even better, controversy. (Almost inevitably, “Joker” took home Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion.) More valuably, they can channel the conversation toward worthier less-shiny objects. At a festival, you find yourself talking to strangers: in lobbies, shuttles, at bars, in snaking lines or seated next to you, as a way of sharing enthusiasm. – The New York Times
Is New York Over?
The city is indeed at a moment of reckoning—not simply because of the pandemic, but because of what it had already become. After the fiscal crisis of 1975, New York and its economy were restructured around tourism, high finance, luxury retail, and real estate. On the glittering surface, things had never looked better. By 2019, New York was richer than it had ever been before, its population at an all-time high and its forests of glass towers rising ever higher. Nearly 65 million tourists a year were flocking to the city—more than six times the number who came when the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Beneath that glittering surface was a lot of emptiness. – The Atlantic
In times of great social and political upheaval, the Grown-ish star and producer finds herself trawling through history for inspiration. “The movements we’re witnessing now are direct descendants of the movements of the past,” says the 20-year-old, commending her generation for rising to the occasion. “I’m witnessing so many peers create new tools to fight against social injustice. We are constantly evolving the ways that we move forward.”
TODAY I AM TIRED as a bruise from too many years of too much explaining. Want to sink my mind into another kind of rising, which is a deeper form of rest, by remembering everything and everyone that got us here. Today I want to remember how we see the ones that came before, how we carry them on our backs and on our shoulders. In our arms. How the past remains a deep and bleeding wound in the present. And yet, a balm. Strange how we know this—that we have survived and continue to survive because as artists and activists, as storytellers and change-makers of all kinds, we know that no matter how crazy and deadly a moment seems, we continue to stare the future down in order to show the way to it. And like the visionaries gathered here—among them, the writers Nikole Hannah-Jones, Isabel Wilkerson, and Colson Whitehead; the activist-creators Ava DuVernay and Killer Mike; the cofounders of Black Lives Matter; and the congressional foursome known as the Squad—we will keep on keeping on.