With the help of new archaeological approaches, our picture of young lives in the Palaeolithic is now marvellously vivid April Nowell The sun rises on the Palaeolithic, 14,000 years ago, and the glacial ice that once blanketed Europe continues its slow retreat. In the daylight, a family begins making its way toward a cave at… Read More Children of the Ice Age
Jafar Panahi after the ban MARK KROTOV Jafar Panahi (director). No Bears. 2022.Jafar Panahi: Interviews. Edited by Drew Todd. University Press of Mississippi, 2019. JAFAR PANAHI’S NO BEARS opens with a long, 270-degree pan around the T-intersection of two streets. We know the action takes place sometime in the post-pandemic present because in the background of the frame… Read More An Entire Society Exists Within Me
How atomic doomsday experiments, fuelled by Cold War fears, shaped, then shook ecologists’ faith in self-healing nature Laura J Martin When Hurricane Fiona flooded regions of Puerto Rico with up to 30 inches of rain in September last year, the island was still recovering from hurricanes Irma and Maria, two catastrophic storms in 2017 during which nearly 3,000… Read More Disturbance
The beloved author’s books are being edited by their publisher to suit contemporary sensibilities. That robs us of the author’s vision—and any sense of history. By Katha Pollitt The United States can be a harsh place to be a child. There are guns galore and bullies in school. Suicide is on the rise, homelessness is rampant,… Read More Let Kids Read Roald Dahl’s Books the Way He Wrote Them
A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country…The river of bile on which Sharlet fights to stay afloat courses from one end of the country to the other. By Elizabeth D. Samet The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet Jeff Sharlet’s new book, The Undertow, plunged me into a vertiginous fever-dream. It induced a physiological response… Read More The Center Cannot Hold
Nostalgia is tremendously shot, and terrifically acted by Favino. It challenges the idea of “nostalgia” as broadcast in the title: it isn’t simply that nostalgia is delusional, or that the past wasn’t as great as it appears when viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. It is that there is no past and present Peter Bradshaw Mario Martone’s… Read More Nostalgia review – bittersweet crime yarn also homecoming love-letter to Naples
NB: An interesting essay. However, Heyking seems to conflate China and ‘Asia’. DS John von Heyking In order to cut through the two false alternatives – “catch up” and “social harmony” – I appeal to the original figure of Western liberal education, Socrates. Socrates indeed embodies the individual as it has been transmitted throughout the… Read More The Figure of Socrates and its Significance for Liberal Education in Asia
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow On the shores of Gitche Gumee,Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,Stood Nokomis, the old woman,Pointing with her finger westward,O’er the water pointing westward,To the purple clouds of sunset. Fiercely the red sun descendingBurned his way along the heavens,Set the sky on fire behind him,As war-parties, when retreating,Burn the prairies on their war-trail;And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward,Suddenly starting from his ambush,Followed fast those bloody footprints,Followed in that fiery war-trail,With its glare upon his features. And Nokomis, the old woman,Pointing with her finger westward,Spake these words to Hiawatha:“Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,Megissogwon, the Magician,Manito of Wealth and Wampum,Guarded by his fiery serpents,Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents,The Kenabeek, the great serpents,Coiling, playing in the water;You can see the black pitch-waterStretching far away beyond them,To the purple clouds of sunset! “He it was who slew my father, By his wicked wiles and cunning,When he from the moon descended,When he came on earth to seek me.He, the mightiest of Magicians,Sends the fever from the marshes,Sends the pestilential vapors,Sends the poisonous exhalations,Sends the white fog from the fen-lands,Sends disease and death among us! “Take your bow, O Hiawatha,Take your arrows, jasper-headed,Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,And your mittens, Minjekahwun,And your birch-canoe for sailing,And the oil of Mishe-Nahma,So to smear its sides, that swiftly You may pass the black pitch-water;Slay this merciless magician,Save the people from the feverThat he breathes across the fen-lands,And avenge my father’s murder!” Straightway then my HiawathaArmed himself with all his war-gear,Launched his birch-canoe for sailing;With his palm its sides he patted,Said with glee, “Cheemaun, my darling,O my Birch-canoe! leap forward,Where you see the fiery serpents,Where you see the black pitch-water!”… https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=283 The Gael – The Last Of The Mohicans Theme
By Regina Sienra Photo: GoFundMe Children have such pure hearts and an 8-year-old from Arkansas named Kayzen recently proved this with a truly selfless act. The young boy formed an unlikely friendship with the waitstaff at a local Waffle House in the Little Rock area, where he frequently has breakfast. In fact, he’s become good friends with his… Read More 8-Year-Old Helps Raise Money for His Favorite Waffle House Worker To Buy a Family Car
NB: A young friend has brought to my notice what this gizmo says about me – its a farrago of lies and half truths. This machine makes me two years older than I am (which is old enough thank you); and attributes to me new-age kind of mumbo-jumbo statements which I have never made. ChatGPT… Read More Noam Chomsky says ChatGPT is a form of High-Tech Plagiarism
After the truth-shower 