Letters, Killers of the Flower Moon and meditation
I’m not going to be able to protest for a while. My son is staying home this week because coronavirus is spreading through his class. Then we spend two weeks with older family members, who we don’t want to infect. So I plan on sending out some letters. If you’d like to send out your own, give this a gander: https://slaughterfreeamerica.substack.com/p/how-to-write-letters-to-newspapers-6eb
One of the downsides of my new state email lists is they’re so large the accounts I’m mailing from keep getting disabled for spam. I guess I need to make more. I’m already spreading the emails across approximately 10 accounts. Part of the trouble is the service providers want me to verify my phone number and I only have two of those.
Anyway, it’s time for (Cell) Culture Talk. Here’s what I’ve been watching, reading and listening to lately.
Movie — Killers of the Flower Moon. This is great film, directed by Martin Scorsese, about the historical Osage murders. Lily Gladstone plays a wealthy Native American, alongside Leonard DiCaprio as her duplicitous husband, and Robert DeNiro as the latter’s conniving uncle. It’s very bleak.
Movie — Leave the World Behind. That was creepy! The Sam Esmail thriller reminded me of M. Night Shyamalan’s best work. Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali play characters trying to survive an apocalyptic event. Perhaps it’s better left mysterious, but I’d definitely watch a sequel.
Music — A John Prine Christmas by John Prine. Strangely, the melancholic Angel from Montgomery was a sing-along staple at the summer camp I attended as a kid. However, I didn’t really start exploring Prine’s catalog until he died during the pandemic. This album wasn’t quite as good as I hoped it would be.
Music — A Very Trainor Christmas by Meghan Trainor. The record is overproduced for my taste, but the singer is so talented and enthusiastic, I quickly forgot about that. Trainor has a number of good original songs here, of which My Kind of Present is probably the best.
Sports — Knicks lose to Celtics, 133-123. It seems like everybody in the Eastern Conference got better over the off-season, except New York. That’s on the front office, but maybe there just wasn’t a good deal to be made.
Meditation passage — Such is a Saint by Swami Ramdas. This one felt similar to You Are Christ’s Hands by Saint Teresa of Avila. It’s all about becoming one with God and, as a result, doing God’s will on earth. I like the outward focus.