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Down here in Florida, we know a thing or two about hurricane preparation. So, for all my friends out on the west coast about to face down their first-ever hurricane, I thought I’d offer my personal short list of things to do and have on-hand before the storm hits. Good luck!
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I started binge-reading science fiction when I was in 8th grade. That was the year that the local school board rezoned the kids from my White, suburban neighborhood to attend the largely Black, urban middle school, Lincoln, across town. This was a miraculous development for me because I had already attended Lincoln (back when my…
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Okay, this one is kind of a no-brainer. Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes contains one of the most iconic guitar riffs since The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. (And, as with that song, the riff supposedly came to the artist, Jack White, in a dream). Yeah, it’s got a great riff, but I mainly like…
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(Yes, We Should Blast Moon Dust into Outer Space to Cool the Earth) Recently I was enjoying a long-distance phone chat with an old friend of mine, and the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to the weather. She lives in Ohio, I live in Florida, and yet our answers to our respective inquiries about…
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Fifteen years ago I read Mark Harris’s excellent non-fiction book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood. It recounts five movies that came out in 1968, a kind of annus mirabilis of American film, a pivot point in both cinema and culture when Hollywood reinvented itself for the better. I…
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I’ve read many fine coming-of-age novels in my time, but never one about a 62-year-old protagonist. Yet, in Under the Wave at Waimea, that is exactly what Paul Theroux delivers. And it’s a thing of beauty. Joe Sharkey is a champion big wave surfer in Hawaii. Past his prime but still a hero to younger…
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It’s hot as hell in Gainesville, as one would expect of Florida in July. But I mean, it’s really, really hot as hell. All over the country, people are feeling the effects of the climate change. Even the most hard-core deniers (some of which are people in my own extended family, whom I love) are…
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It’s a well known fact of life that the older you get, the more you find yourself drawn to old things. This has always been true for me. I find myself particularly entertained by the classic pop culture of the twentieth century. A few years ago, for instance, I was working my way through the…
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The great actor and comic genius Alan Arkin has left us. I loved him ever since I saw 1979’s The In-Laws, which is surely one of the best comedies of the 20th Century. Arkin plays Sheldon Kornpett, a straight-laced Manhattan dentist who finds himself caught up in an adventure with his soon to be in-law,…
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Wednesday night I went to the movies for the first time in three years. I saw Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, and I’m still trying to process it. It’s kind of like what might happen if David Lynch and Tim Burton teamed up to make a Pixar movie. It’s certainly very good, and very powerful, but…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 