A story of Kansas City, 1986–1988 — I estimate I was 12 years old when I met Ruth Kindermann. I’d just crapped out of sixth grade at a public elementary school in Kansas City called Marlborough like the cigarettes, over chronic periods of truancy and a series of conflicts with teachers and classmates. My mother somehow arranged…

Tough old cowboys ain’t always what they seem in this simmering tale of lust, duplicity, and alienation — but then, who is? — This article spoils the movie like toxic masculinity spoils a potentially hot roll in the hay. No secret goes unrevealed. Watch the movie first. “What kind of a man would I be if I did not help my mother — if I did not save her?” Power of the Dog is one hell of a movie, in which nearly everything of consequence goes unspoken. Indeed, it’s a movie about the fact that…

Here’s a little history lesson. You might have heard about The Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) protesting hard in France for the past few years. There was a comparable movement in the late 90s and early 2000s, which focused on radical group tactics of defense in order to successfully stand up…

How a dwindling minority of mid-caste teacher’s pets dominate the expert class despite their near-total lack of experience — I’ve written before about the Square University Culture. I don’t mean everybody who attends university — I mean people who are born in comfortable circumstances, advance easily through the educational system, get their university degrees, then find jobs and settle into comfortable lives (generally including marriage, kids, buying a house…

A lesser A24 has much to offer in theme and thesis, but it’s got no meat on the bones. — X is an interesting movie, funny and odd with a smart screenplay and a talented cast. It falls short of what I’d expected when I heard “ultra violent pornographic slasher movie” — the sex is tame and conventional, the violence (while well-done) is well on the soft side of a…

All it took was one vote to spell doom for Roe vs. Wade — The Senate just voted on the Women’s Healthcare Protection Act — the law that would make abortion legal at a Federal level — and it did not pass. How can this be when the Democrats hold a majority in the Senate? …

On the West Bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, stands a collection of Ancient Egyptian ruins too vast to see in a lifetime. We spent one day there. — Out of any city in Egypt, Luxor has the largest concentration of ancient temples and tombs — so many that you really couldn’t see them all in one visit. If you tried, you’d get pretty bored by the end, because there’s a certain sameness that comes clear after one has…

Once known as Thebes, the capitol of Ancient Egypt during most of its existence, Luxor is a living outdoor museum bursting with ancient temples and tombs. Take a slow train down the Nile from Cairo — ours was scheduled for 10 hours but took 14 — and you’ll arrive at…

It’s chaos down there, and he’s got the town by the balls. — In 1995, when I was just 21 years old, my ex-wife and I had a son and named him Alex. He was born with an ethereal beauty, like a serene and tiny elf creature; but as he grew into his second stage of infancy he was known in Portland for…