Emotional FitBitness

We’re out on our thrice-weekly walk and Elsie talks of tyranny. The tyranny of our modern technology specifically. The tyranny of her wearable step counter to be even more specific.

“I’ve just let it go,” she tells me, in the spirit of one who’s freed a wild animal from captivity. “I refuse to let it dictate the course of my day anymore.” Continue reading

A Resistible Rise

“Do you remember when I directed Arturo Ui with the kids?” Cecil asks me.

I didn’t. Not offhand. Cecil had been a secondary school English and drama teacher, exiting the profession, he claimed, before they replaced all books with instruction manuals. That was back a few years now. Retirement suited Cecil who’d definitely mellowed, became less ornery and cantankerous. Continue reading

A Search For Intelligent Life Should Begin At Home

“At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”

So said the head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command, General Glen VanHerck to a reporter’s question asking if he or anyone in the U.S. government had ruled out ‘extraterrestrial origin’ for the space balloons that were suddenly appearing in North American skies, or rather, suddenly appearing on the North American public’s radar, four to date, if I’m counting correctly, all shot down, wreckages still unaccounted for, if I’m up on the latest news. Continue reading