Author and journalist George Monbiot has some good career advice: “So my final piece of advice is this: when faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the “necrophiliac” world of wealth and power, choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be. Your peers might at first look [...]
Archive for September, 2011
Things to ponder : 30 September 2011
Posted in Things to ponder, tagged George Monbiot, Tariq Jahan, Things to ponder on September 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
My July and August 2011
Posted in Diary, tagged Ayrton Senna, books, Harry Potter, movies, my diary, poetry on September 21, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Just realised that my posts for July and August have been sitting as drafts for ages without being published. So, this is what I have been up to apart from going to visit my friends and family in the UK and Spain over the summer: Books Small Island & The Long Song (Andrea Levy) : [...]
Mark di Suvero at Governors Island
Posted in My photos, What I'm looking at, tagged art, Governors Island, Mark di Suvero, My photos, sculpture, Storm King Art Center on September 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I am lucky enough to have seen Mark di Suvero’s sculptures at Storm King Art Center. However, it was a completely different experience viewing them juxtaposed against the Manhattan skyline on Governors Island:
Warrior
Posted in What I'm watching, tagged Jole Edgerton, MMA, movies, Nick Nolte, Tom Hardy, Warrior on September 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I went to a special screening of Warrior at Lincoln Center just because mixed martial arts is my way of keeping fit: Tom Hardy stars as Tommy Conlon, a former wrestling prodigy who returns home to Pittsburgh after a stint in the Marines and grudgingly enlists his estranged father (Nick Nolte) to train him for [...]
Orphan elephants
Posted in What I'm reading, tagged National Geographic on September 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
National Geographic has a wonderful piece on the the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the world’s most successful orphan elephant rescue and rehabilitation center: “Spend enough time around elephants and it’s difficult not to anthropomorphize their behavior. “Elephants are very human animals,” says Sheldrick, sitting one afternoon on the back porch of her house at the [...]
High Line II
Posted in My photos, tagged High Line, My photos, New York, The New York Review of Books on September 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I finally visited the High Line in May even though the park had been opened in 2009. It hasn’t taken me quite as long to get to the new extension, which opened in June, and it is still amazing to see what has been created out of a disused railway line: Happily, the same elated [...]
Fire in Babylon
Posted in What I'm reading, What I'm watching, tagged Andrea Levy, books, cricket, Fire in Babylon, movies, Small Island, The Long Song, Viv Richards, West Indies on September 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
On a recent flight I watched Fire in Babylon, a fascinating documentary on the West Indies cricket team. I remember watching their test matches against England when I was a teenager but am ashamed to admit that at the time I had no idea of the political importance of their victories. One of my favourite [...]
The world spins
Posted in What I'm reading, tagged books, Colum McCann, In Memorium, Let the Great World Spin, Locksley Hall, poetry, Tennyson on September 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough. She lies on the bed beside Claire, above the sheets. The faint tang of the old woman’s breath on the air. The clock. The fan. The breeze. The world spinning.” These are the final words of Colum McCann’s fantastic novel, Let the Great World Spin, whose [...]
Bringing up Baby
Posted in What I'm reading, tagged Bringing up Baby, Cary Grant, movies on September 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I am happy to see that The New York Review of Books’ piece on the new memoir by Jennifer Grant about her father, the great Cary Grant is accompanied by a photograph from my all-time favourite film, Bringing up Baby. I defy anyone to watch this film and not laugh. It’s a shame they don’t [...]
Babies on the brink
Posted in What I'm reading, tagged Babies on the brink, BBC on September 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In a new series for BBC One, film-makers visited specialist facilities to witness efforts being made to safeguard the future of the world’s rarest species. BBC Nature – In Pictures: Babies on the brink
