A speculative mind

  Fear is a choice It is a choice for the person inflicting the fear. Whether it is a church or a government or a populist gadfly, they have chosen to inflict fear because it brings them power: Fear Hell Fear brown people Fear environmental collapse Fear the rich people Fear the poor people Fear the racists Fear the antiracists Fear the asteroid Fear the fascists Fear the socialists Fear nuclear annihilation Fear the future Fear anyone who is different In the words of Frank Herbert, “Fear is the mind-killer.” If you give into fear, you are giving “them” power over you. Understanding is antifear Knowledge is antifear Compassion is antifear Love is antifear I shall fear no evil Star Liner

  If I told you The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about an orphan girl who watched her brother die and is then given over to foster parents who are dirt poor (the mother calls her names and swears like a sailor) and that all this takes place in NAZI Germany starting on the eve of World War II, you would think that sounds like a depressing book. You would be wrong. The narrator of this story is Death. This seems fitting for a story that takes place in NAZI Germany, but this Death is at times sensitive and even, dare I say it, likeable. He/she/it does their job, no question about it, collecting souls in record numbers. Death has spent quite a bit of time watching Liesel (our main character). Liesel is thrown into an unfamiliar world. Even though her foster mother, Rosa, is hard and berates her, Death assures us that Rosa loves her in her own way. The fact that Liesel’s family is poor does not mean that she leads an uninteresting life. She has adventures with her friend Rudy and s...

  I wouldn’t really call Sarah Pinsker’s novel A   Song for a new Day a post-Apocalyptic novel because the apocalypse isn’t all that apocalyptic. But then that might be because I have become sensitized to it. The problems start with terrorist strikes, but then there is a global pandemic. You say, this is science fiction? Sounds just like the past couple of years. And it is, except that this book was written in 2019, just before we had a global pandemic. There are two main characters: a singer named Luce Cannon (great name for a rock singer). She was an up-and-coming talent when everything went south. She gave up music for a while but then found the irresistible pull calling her back.   The other main character is a young wide-eyed talent scout named Rosemary. Rosemary has lived in her bubble for most of her life. She learns to push back some of her fears to grasp new opportunities. Her naivete is endearing but also lands her in trouble. There are two other ever-present...

  We currently live in a time that is unprecedented in its unprecedentedness. You don’t usually realize you are living through history. History is something that just happens whether you are paying attention or not. It doesn’t feel like history. It just feels like today. Yesterday was just a little bit different than today, which will be just a little bit different than tomorrow. You never grasp that you are living through history until you look back at it. There are focal points in history. Times when the world was forever changed, but we don’t always recognize them as focal point. Homelessness in the modern sense of the world didn’t exist in America until the 1980’s. There have always been a few people who choose to be homeless, vagrants, tramps, or hobos. But homelessness as an institution began in the 1980’s. Policies were enacted that promoted homelessness: tax cuts, housing cuts, and turning mental patients loose (shutting down institutions). Since then, the homeless prob...

  Back in the day, if you were a king, or a ruler of any kind, the idea of marrying your children off to the offspring of another kingdom was a common practice. That’s how alliances were formed. If you were worried about country “A” invading you, you could marry your daughter off to the prince of country “A”. A show of kinship. Attacking your in-laws was frowned upon (that was the theory, but it didn’t always work out that way in practice). Also, countries "B" and "C" might think twice about invading you. This intermixing was so commonplace in European history that no one thought twice about it. There was also the prejudice that only someone of noble blood was worthy of another with noble blood. Royal children were pawns in a royal chess game. Take the case of Lucrezia Borgia. She was royal in some sense of the word since her father was the Pope (Alexander VI). We all know that priests and popes were not supposed to have children, but such things were winked at in...

  A girl born in a small French village in the 17 th Century, sees the life that is laid out for her, sees the marriage that has been arranged for her to an older man with kids from a previous marriage, sees the toil and heartache that is in store for her, and decides to run. She prays to the gods of nature that her friend has told her about, but the one who answers is darkness. We never really know if he is the Devil or a demon. She just refers to him as the Darkness. She buys freedom and life for as long as she wants it in exchange for her soul. When she wakes, she discovers that no one knows her, not even her parents. She further discovers that once she disappears from someone’s view, they no longer remember meeting her. The title says invisible life. She is not invisible, but her "life" is, her existence is. No matter how long she lives she will leave no mark on the world. It is hard not to put yourself in her shoes and realize how problematic such a life is. She can...

  Is a Shakespearean actor better than another actor? We do tend to elevate Shakespearean actors, put them on a pedestal. When Patrick Stewart was cast as jean Luc Picard on Star Trek The Next generation the announcement was always prefaced: “ . . . Shakespearean actor, Patrick Stewart . . . “ You often hear of certain actors referred to that way and we are supposed to be impressed. But should we be? Is being a Shakespearean actor make you a better actor that anybody else? Shakespeare was a great writer. He wrote wonderful lines of dialogue. Maybe actors just sound better, smarter, cleverer when his word come out of their mouths. Perhaps, but isn’t there a technique to Shakespearean acting? Don’t you have to know about iambic pentameter and all that? You don’t just spew the words forth and expect to sound brilliant. True, it is a little different when acting in a Shakespearean play. Actors have to recognize a rhythm to the speech. There are some tips and tricks to be learned, but...