A friend wondered aloud why psychics always seemed to be women. It's not a question I had ever considered, but it made sense once I paused to think about all the psychics I had ever seen in pop culture. They were all women. The archetype for me is the gypsy fortuneteller in "The Wolf Man,"… Continue reading What Can Psychics Tell Us about the Present?
Tag: War
Torrents and Explosions We Now Take for Granted
Looking for something the wonderful German critic Walter Benjamin says in Illuminations about the cheapening of experience in a mass mediated world, I came across this haunting reflection that describes the world as my great-grandparents must have seen it, in the years after the horrific brutality of the Great War: A generation that had gone… Continue reading Torrents and Explosions We Now Take for Granted
Remembering Shock and Awe et al.
I was going through a desk drawer yesterday and I found a wrinkled piece of scrap paper, which goes back to the spring of 2003. It was the early days of the Iraq War, and I had jotted down some phrases which I was hearing over and over again on the radio and tv. Looking… Continue reading Remembering Shock and Awe et al.
Jets! Bombs! War! A Visit to the National Air and Space Museum!
We went to the National Air and Space Museum today, thinking it'd be a lark for our 16-month old son, who loves planes and anything else that makes a lot of noise and moves through the sky. I'd forgotten, though, exactly what the Air and Space Museum memorializes: jets, bombs, and war. Truly, the history… Continue reading Jets! Bombs! War! A Visit to the National Air and Space Museum!