Wed, March 10, 2010 at 9:21 AM Friends: Thanks to everyone for participating the last few months on my little Facebook experiment. Nice to have such diverse viewpoints, as well as a forum that’s both silly and serious. I’m planning an updated Web site and related things (social networking, blog, etc.) to promote my newspaper column and foster broad discussion/gags. What would you like to see? Post on FB, on this blog, or send me e-mail. More soon…
Wed, March 10, 2010 at 9:11 AM Thanks, Granny D, for your inspiring dedication to an important cause. May we all have such passion and devotion to the public good in our later years — much less in our younger and middle-age years.
Mon, March 8, 2010 at 4:17 PM There’s been much discussion about “The Hurt Locker” and whether it is a “realistic” and “authentic” and “accurate” story about war and its impact on soldiers sent to fight it, or just a piece of fiction; whether it’s “pro-military” or “anti-military”; whether it’s pro-Iraq War or anti-Iraq War. To me, this debate misses the point: Of course it’s fiction, as is every other war movie, no matter how “authentic” it’s said to be.
Further, in my view it’s a bit grim to imagine that (a) we’re turning stories based on a current, ongoing war (or any war) into entertainment (as FX did in 2006 with its Iraq War TV series “Over There”), no matter the theme or message; and (b) there’s an argument, taken seriously, that these kinds of movies help us to understand war and its complexity.
Discussion question: Where are we as a society and culture when the actual, human reality of war doesn’t provide enough information — or isn’t emotionally compelling enough(!) — to demonstrate war’s absurdity and irredeemable evil? And in such an environment, do we have a prayer of *ever* moving away from the (mistaken) belief that war and violence is a permanent, inevitable element of human relations?
Fri, January 29, 2010 at 3:00 PM Back in my early days as a columnist for the Berkshire Eagle (in 2004), I wrote a fairly “out there” humor piece about what J.D. Salinger might publish posthumously. It wasn’t a typical newspaper column, and I suspect it was met with a great deal of head-scratching by readers. It was called “Waiting for Salinger,” and it can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/yay3tfm
Wed, November 11, 2009 at 9:37 AM … is up here: http://tinyurl.com/y9supwn
Also, for those of you RSS-i-fying the Reason Gone Mad blog feed, you might want to check out the Facebook page. For the moment, at least, we’re having some fun over there instead of here on the blog. Check it: http://www.tinyurl.com/sheinonfacebook.