Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

    William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy                           Hopalong on his horse, Topper  Attached  here  is a wonderful new documentary on famous American cowboy actor William Boyd, and the movie and TV Western hero he portrayed and came to emulate in his personal life, Hopalong Cassidy. Pam Dewey, author, documentary producer, and US social historian, has masterfully put together yet another account of 19th and 20th Century America’s story, and the myths and legends of its making. In her presentation, Pam's attention to historical detail and infusion of aspects of her early life in the US Midwest during the middle of the 20th Century make this production highly educational and authentic. The male heroic themes Ms. Dewey explores have continued to resonate in North America and in slightly altered forms worldwide, from the 1980s into the early 21st Century. One need look no furth...

Sacrifice of Isaac. Michelangelo Merisi, detto il Caravaggio (Caravaggio, Milano 1571 – Porto Ercole, Grosseto 1610) Ruminant stomachs have four compartments. So do the minds of some featherless bipeds. I have gnawed and swallowed Ryan Kemp’s essay on Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855),  “An Unlikely Meditation on Modern Happiness.”  I have now regurgitated it from my mental rumen and begun chewing its cognitive cud. Next it will pass to my subsequent deeper mental stomachs to be fully digested. Ultimately to be assimilated into my being as knowledge or plopped behind me as, well, bullshit. Here are my initial ruminations. I will not know, until I read and understand it, what Kierkegaard means in  Fear and Trembling  when he uses the expression “infinite resignation” to describe how he chose submitting to God. Based on my frustrations reading and comprehending other of K’s works, I am not looking forward to trying. But I will try unless life’s clock run...