by Mohammad Iqbal
“I have the power of sight but cannot see,” Venus said,
“No refuge on the morning’s hem.
Is my destiny merely a bubble, a spark?”
“O, jewel on dawn’s forehead,” I said, “Don’t weep.
My thoughts spring from you to sustain a garden
where I am a gardener, my passion eternal like dew.”
Translated from the original Urdu by Rafiq Kathwari /@brownpundit
by Max Sirak
(Audio version available. Click here or scroll down)
Last month I told y'all about my five favorite things. "Timing" made my list. Specifically, how much I love it when events seem to fall in spacetime together by chance. For example, this past Friday, I was explaining to a friend the column I was going to write while on the way to see a movie I knew nothing about.
mother! – *spoilers!!*
(If you're planning on seeing the movie and don't want to know anything about it ahead of time – STOP HERE. …But bookmark the link, for later consumption…)
Darren Aronofsky has a new movie in theaters. He's a polarizing director who makes weird, uncomfortable, confusing, symbolic films. Pi, his first movie, was released in 1998. Requiem For A Dream, his year 2000 feature, is possibly the most disturbing thing I've ever seen on a screen.
The only thing I knew about mother! before going to see it came from a text. My friend, Adam, wrote: "Dude – I have no idea what I just watched but you gotta see it."
So I did.
by Ashutosh Jogalekar
Died in glitter and grist, in skeletons and slogans.
Scenic Riverside Drive which bequeathed you to us.
Sparkling New York lent us its sordid dreams
To trample underfoot, like so many lost souls.
You were born of a merchant;
Of loathsome success,
Of a hurried past,
Whose pogroms pushed him into the future.
Precious, precocious little one
You lit up your mother's eyes.
Her arm you were coy about,
Gloved as it stayed, seemingly hiding
The misfortune of your future mischief.
Never to be spoken of
In that household of labored repute.
by Christopher Bacas
Well trained in the requisite skills, Doc had no problem with his book. In the room, he slept long and hard; really hard. I asked if he could smoke outside and he agreed. I tried not to wake him with my 5am yoga and bubbling saucepans. The hot plate got constant use with the winter squash, kombu (seaweed), carrots and burdock stored in my overhead. Lentils came out particularly tasty.
In the bathroom, early morning, soaking, waiting for my oatmeal, I heard the phone ring. Fully expecting Doc to pick it up, ten, twenty, then thirty rings passed. Annoyed, I rushed out with a towel on and snatched up the receiver. The preset wake up call was silent. I hung up. Standing over roomie, his face a mask, I got a hot flash of fear. No one sleeps with a ringing phone six inches away. He was dead. I started to prod him, gingerly, awkwardly holding my towel, still dripping water. Soon, I was shoving the rubbery body. His face never moved. Then, a mythical princess, he slowly opened his eyes. I felt tears spill over my eyelids.
by Samir Chopra
At that moment of induced irritation, my thoughts were not inchoate, not just an incoherent mess of unresolved frustration; instead, they seemed to arrange themselves into a sentence-long expression of aggravation immediately comprehensible to some imaginary intended audience: “My least favorite pedestrian is the kind that walks in one direction with his attention diverted elsewhere, whether it’s smartphones, kids, or pets.” Or perhaps, “That’s quite all right; you should barge ahead on this sidewalk, your head down, unseeing and uncaring.” This reaction was instinctive; I did not stop to deliberate and compose my verbal reaction in sentence form; my brain responded like a trained machine, a well-primed one; a species of Pavlovian instinctive reaction had taken over my mind. It was not the first time that I had, on encountering something entirely weekday or quotidian, and yet, not unworthy of a mental response, suffered a brief emotional tic and found myself formulating such a summation of my feelings at that instant. The verbal expression of my thoughts did not suggest it was the starting point of a letter to a newspaper or an essay; it had to be concise and succinct.
This was not your garden-variety introspection; it was clearly intended for future public consumption, for a pithy display of my thoughts about a matter of personal interest to those who might be interested. I sensed my audience would be sympathetic; some would chime in with empathetic responses; yet others would add embellishments in their comments and annotations. I did not think this sentiment of mine would be greeted with disapproval; I anticipated approval. Indeed, that is why I indulged in that little bout of composition and drafting in my mind, framing the written expression of my thought to make it appropriately irate or ironic. Maybe the ensuing conversation would feature some cantankerous rants about the smartphone generation, about over-indulgent parents and pet-owners, all too busy texting, fretting over children and dogs and cats; perhaps some of my interlocutors would add witty tales of how, one day, in a urban encounter for the ages, they had stopped one of these offenders, and told them off with an artful blend of the scornful and witty. Perhaps someone would add a ‘horror story’ about how coffee had been spilled on them by someone just like the young woman; and more outrage would ensue. A little chat corner would have developed.
I had been drafting a Facebook status, a tweet.
The folks at Facebook and Twitter have achieved something remarkable: they have made their users regard the world as staging ground for inputs to their products. The world and its events and relations are, so to speak, so much raw material to be submitted to the formulation and framing of Facebook statuses and tweets. The world is not the world tout court, it is the provisioner of ‘content’ for our social media reports.
by Ali Minai
A vivid portrait of Heaviside emerges from the book. We see a brilliant and curmudgeonly character – willful but not unkind, except to those who challenge his well-founded theories with half-baked notions. After rather brief coverage of Heaviside’s background and childhood, the book moves to the beginning of his professional career as a technician in the telegraph service. Lacking a formal advanced education, Heaviside was fortunate to get this opportunity, in part through the efforts of his brother, Arthur, who was already employed in the service and – very importantly – the recommendation of the great inventor, Sir Charles Wheatstone, who was Heaviside’s uncle by marriage. For all the struggles that Heaviside had to go through to gain recognition of his genius, he was fortunate in one thing: He got into the field of electrical communication – the telegraph – at exactly the right time for a person of his aptitude. It was then a new technology, but had already established its utility. The desire to connect the world through telegraph was a major effort into which private investors and governments were willing to sink resources. And yet, everything in the field was being done through trial and error, without the benefit of established theory. The field was dominated by technicians rather than scientists, and the leading engineers of the time – such as Heaviside’s nemesis, William Preece – saw theoreticians as little more than ivory tower wonks with little to contribute to engineering practice. Heaviside was the first person to bridge this divide.
by Thomas R. Wells
So what does the word ‘natural' add? We use it to demarcate the edges of responsibility. We don't use it very well.
Man-made disasters, like Chernobyl or Deepwater Horizon or Bhopal or Grenfell Tower, are ones acknowledged to have been brought about by human decisions. These disasters could have been avoided if certain people had made different choices. The suffering of a man-made disaster is therefore the responsibility of particular persons and institutions. They can be held answerable for their decisions: required to justify them and judged – and punished – if they cannot. For example, the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire will scrutinise in forensic detail the reasoning behind the key decisions that permitted a containable danger to be transformed into mass death; such as the installation of a flammable cladding, the absence of sprinklers; and refuge in place instructions for residents. Some decision-makers may face criminal charges for negligence. They will certainly be vilified in the tabloid press and hate-mobbed on social media. Organisations like the local council and the company running the building will likely receive an official shaming, fines, and compulsory reorganisation or dissolution.
In contrast natural disasters are supposed to have been caused entirely by forces outside human control. They were inevitable. No one can be held responsible.
However, very few disasters these days meet the requirements for a natural disaster. It's not enough that a natural event was necessary to the disaster, i.e. that the disaster wouldn't have happened without it; that all those people couldn't have been killed by falling buildings if the ground hadn't been violently shaking. The natural event must also have been sufficient to bring about the disaster.
To understand the idea of a sufficient cause, it may help to think about imaginary but plausible worlds besides our own actual one. These are worlds in which everything operates by the same laws of physics, but particular histories may be different. For example, Hillary may be president instead. For one event to be the necessary cause of another, there must be no possible worlds in which event B (e.g. thousands of schools collapse) occurs without event A (e.g. magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Sichuan) also occurring. For one event to be the sufficient cause of another, it has to be the case that there must be no possible worlds in which event A (8.0 earthquake) occurs without event B (school collapses) also occurring. Only if it is true that in all possible worlds, if event A happens then event B also happens, is the language of inevitability justified.
Let's put that abstract point in the context of a real disaster. If the earthquake in Haiti had been the sufficient cause of the 200,000 deaths and vast infrastructure destruction that would mean that in any possible world in which an earthquake of that size had struck at that time and place, such massive destruction of human life would always occur.
by Syed Tasnim Raza
It was late October 1971. My brother-in-law, Dr. Tariq Khan and I were interviewing together for residency training positions in Surgery. We finished our interview at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn at 7:30 PM one night and then drove to Syracuse in heavy rain. We arrived at a friend's house at 2 AM and after sleeping a couple of hours we drove to our next interview at the Buffalo General Hospital in Buffalo, New York. There was heavy fog with very poor visibility, but we had to be at the Buffalo General before 9, so we sped west in the fog and made it there just in time.
The person to interview us first that morning was the acting director of the residency program in Buffalo, Dr. Richard H. Adler, a general Thoracic Surgeon. He had an angelic face and a lovely soft smile, and his presence immediately made us comfortable. The first question he asked us was why our eyes were bloodshot. We explained the all-night driving session after our interview finished later than expected in Brooklyn. He seemed impressed. After reviewing our application and reference letters he sent us to meet two other young faculty members, Dr. Jack Cudmore and Dr. Roger Dayer. And then we were given a tour of the hospital by Dr. Robert Milch, then the senior resident in surgery. After lunch, we met Dr. Adler again, for the closing interview, where he offered both of us the first-year residency position in surgery. This was a pyramidal program, so that there would be 15 first year residents, but these would be reduced to only six in the second year. Both Tariq and I were so excited we accepted the offer on the spot. We would join the program in July 1972. Thus, began my relationship with Dr. Adler, who would become my teacher, mentor and friend for the next 45 years.
Even though there were many Thoracic surgeons in Buffalo during the years Dr. Adler was active, he was the thoracic surgeon and did over 80% of all thoracic surgery at the Buffalo General Hospital. He was Professor of Surgery and eventually Director of the Thoracic Surgery Residency program until his retirement in 1990. He was one of the best thoracic surgeons both in the operating room, and also in his fund of knowledge about thoracic disease, which he always kept updated and current. Dr. Adler was trained at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor under Dr. Herbert Sloan, one of the eminent thoracic surgeons of his time, who also was the Editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. After his training, Dr. Adler came home to Buffalo and joined the Surgical faculty at the Buffalo General Hospital under Dr. John Payne, the Chairman of Surgery. During the next decade, Dr. Adler spent a year of further training in England in one of the foremost thoracic surgery clinics. While in London, Dr. Adler was exposed to Norman Barrett, one of the premier thoracic surgeons, who described the mucosal changes in the lower esophagus due to chronic reflux of acid from the stomach, now commonly known as Barrett's esophagus. On his return to Buffalo, Dr. Adler started methodically collecting patients with hiatal hernia and acid reflux and did mucosal biopsies of the lower esophagus. When Dr. Adler presented the results of his studies at a Thoracic Surgical meeting, Norman Barrett was in the audience. He discussed the paper and congratulated Dr. Adler for presenting the largest series of well documented cases of Barrett's esophagitis reported until then. Dr. Adler had similarly large series of case-studies, where he performed talc pleurodesis for malignant pleural effusion or patients with post-pneumonectomy space and others.
His attention to detail and very methodical follow-up of any given thoracic disease was remarkable. I always enjoyed assisting him at the smallest procedure, because he made it into an art form.
by Brooks Riley
by Emrys Westacott
On September 19, Donald Trump spoke before the UN general assembly. Addressing the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, he said that the US "if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, . . . will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." And of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he said, "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime."
There is nothing new about the US president affirming a commitment to defend itself and its allies. What is noteworthy about Trump's remarks is his cavalier talk of totally destroying another country, which implicitly suggests the use of nuclear weapons, and his deliberately insulting–as opposed to just criticizing–Kim Jong-un. He seems to enjoy getting down in the gutter with the North Korean leader, who responded in kind by calling Trump a "frightened dog," and a "mentally deranged dotard." Critics have noted that Trump's language is closer to what one expects of a strutting schoolyard bully than a national leader addressing an august assembly. And one could ask interesting questions about the psychological make-up of both men that leads them to speak the way they do. From a moral and political point of view, though, the only really important question regarding Trump's behavior is whether or not it is sensible. Is it a good idea to threaten and insult Kim Jong-un.
As a general rule, the best way to evaluate any action, including a speech act, is pragmatically: that is, by its likely effects. This is not always easy. Our predictions about the effects of an action are rarely certain, and they are often wrong. Moreover, even if we agree that one should think pragmatically, most of us find it hard to stick to this resolve. How many parents have nagged their teenage kids even though they know that such nagging will probably be counterproductive? How many of us have gone ahead and made an unnecessary critical comment to a partner that we know is likely to spark an unpleasant and unproductive row? And if one happens to be an ignorant, impulsive, narcissist, the self-restraint required in acting pragmatically is probably out of reach. Which is worrying when one considers how high the stakes are in the verbal cock fight between Trump and Jong-un.
When the writer Paul Mason was booked to appear at the annual conference of Progress earlier this year, he was more or less assured a rough reception. Progress, after all, is a Blairite "ginger group" within the British Labour Party – formed in 1996, one year before their boy won power – and Mason the quasi-Marxist author of the excellent Postcapitalism and a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. But I doubt he was prepared for just how bitter and self-pitying the right wing of the party has become since Corbyn set about transforming Labour into a genuinely social democratic movement with broad appeal amongst the young and the poor. Referring to anti-Blairite tweets Mason had sent in the wake of the May election, one audience member complained how "intimidated" she now felt at Labour Party meetings. Another demanded Mason apologise. (He didn't.) But things got really interesting when the panel chair suggested that Mason had "entered the Labour Party behind Jeremy Corbyn" – a not-so-veiled reference to the Trotskyist tactic of "entryism" whereby radical groups affix themselves to larger mainstream organisations in order to influence policy. Mason reminded the assembled comrades that he'd joined the Labour Party at nineteen years of age, and that his grandfather was of the generation who'd founded the party in 1900. He then invited the Progress faithful to consider whether they wanted to remain in Corbyn's Labour Party at all. As he put it, to boos and jeers from the floor:
In case you're misunderstanding me, just listen. If you want a centrist party, this is not going to be it for the next ten years. If it's really important to you to have a pro-Remain party that is in favour of illegal war, in favour of privatisation, form your own party and get on with it!
There weren't many takers for that last proposition, and to an outsider Mason's peroration might sound like a triumphalist taunt. But the notion that a new party could emerge in the wake of the Brexit referendum is not entirely fanciful. Inspired by the example of Emmanuel Macron, Tony Blair himself has established an entity called the Institute for Global Change, a "policy platform" that aims to refill "the wide-open space in the middle of politics", while Paddy Ashdown, one-time leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, has helped establish More United, a "political start-up" that raises funds for politicians of a centrist, pro-EU persuasion, regardless of party affiliation. Furthermore, in August, former Tory aide and political editor of the Daily Mail, James Chapman, suggested that a number of Conservative MPs had responded warmly to his idea for a new centrist party called The Democrats. "They are not saying they are going to quit their parties," Chapman told the BBC; "but they are saying they understand that there is an enormous gap in the centre now of British politics."
by Michael Liss
A friend asked me that question recently, and I almost found myself stumped.
Reading isn't skimming. It's not staring at a screen, spasmodically flipping back and forth between the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Barron's, electoral-vote.com, Foreign Policy, NRO and anything else to which Twitter would lead. It's certainly not dipping myself into the digital inkwell of the Comments section, finding something to be outraged about, and letting it fly. That's not even writing, much less reading for content.
So, what was I reading? Books. I need books, something to stimulate my brain instead of my adrenals. I could, as I have done countless times, head to Strand and wander up and down the aisles looking for things that might pique my interest. There's always something at Strand. Fiction, non-fiction, history, science, art, architecture and music, tomes on various topics. I am a serious tome fan, and Strand is the place where you can amuse yourself just by scanning the blurbs. "Professor Throckmanshire has produced the definitive work on mid-18th Century Cornish snuffboxes." If that doesn't appeal….
Yet, I have enough books. I know, you can never have enough, but I live in a Manhattan apartment, and, short of tethering rucksacks of them to the outside of the windows (a practice frowned upon by both the City and the co-op board) there isn't a lot of space. The bedrooms are filled with them, the living room stuffed. They are piled up on surfaces and double-deep in built-ins. Of course, a few more wouldn't hurt, but a few more are always arriving—gifts from family and friends, odds and ends on which I couldn't resist spending the kids' tuition money. And the dirty secret was I hadn't read them all yet. I'd been too busy feeding my political obsessions. I didn't need to go to Strand—there was plenty to harvest here at home. Clearly, it wasn't the quantity of books; I was falling down on the reading of them.
There was my problem, and my solution. So, I made my way through the vast expanse of my palatial residence looking for ideas—different ones than those that had distracted me for the last year. I started in my daughter's room. Plenty of options, not all entirely interesting to a man of my years. Some were clearly a no. Books on classical music…possible, but perhaps a little esoteric. The contents of my son's room just didn't inspire. Our bedroom…eh, and there was the omnipresent risk of raising dust if I probed too deeply. The living room held the treasures, if I could just get through the piles and obstructions, the vintage speakers, and, occasionally, the plants.
There's a strange feeling when you do this, going from volume to volume, topic to topic. It's almost like reliving past relationships. This love-interest lasted about three months. This one, somewhat longer, but didn't she dump you because you never understood her, or was it that she didn't understand you? Here's a passion that never quite left, and these few…what exactly was I thinking when I made the time and the space?
by Leanne Ogasawara
So, when the time came and I found myself back in Los Angeles, I started thinking about–and really started heavy-duty dreaming about– joining one. And not just any bookclub, but I was imagining a kind of glittering evening gathering, which could take place in various refined rooms filled with books and art. And obviously, there had to be alcohol. And definitely my bookclub needed men. Part of my fantasy involved a blurring of bookclub, cocktail party and supper club. I had visions of Turin-style appertivo; discussing Nietzsche over our campari; or a dinner inspired by the gourmand extraordinaire, Detective Mantalbano–featuring my famous caponata (in my fantasy, my caponata is legendary).
My longings finally reached a crisis point last November when I read a really charming post at aNewscafe about a ladies' monthly bookclub in Northern California. The post was about the bookclub's most recent read: A Gentleman in Moscow, about which I was also reading and imagining a dinner party of my own. In my fantasies, I would have prepared a lavish dinner beginning with (of course) champagne and blini and then moving on to the mouth-wateringly-described Latvian stew with Georgian wine of the novel. The author of the blog post, Hollyn Chase, seemed to have it all–a gorgeous dining room filled with books, a fabulous menu plan and best of all, great friends.
Generational analysis, when done poorly, is half-a-notch above astrology: All the people born at this time are like this!
Of course there's plenty of good generational research and analysis by demographers and other social scientists. However, most people don't delve into that stuff. Most people simply absorb generational analysis from popular culture. That's unfortunate, because you can often get more penetrating insights from a Chinese restaurant paper place mat.
Worse yet, a lot of pop culture generational analysis is passively racist and classist. You know who we're really talking about when we say “Baby Boomers,” right? It's hardly every American born between 1946-1964. Black people? Latinos? Most immigrants? The deeply impoverished? Pushaw. For the most part, we're just talking about the white MCAU (middle class and up), and whoever can pass through their circles. And we're not even talking about them smartly. By and large, we just rehash dumb stereotypes. This generation sacrificed. That generation navel gazed. Bla bla bla.
For example, when I Googled “Baby Boomers are,” the auto complete came up:
selfish
the biggest
entitled
When I Googled “Millennials are,” the auto complete came up:
lazy
the worst
screwed
Indeed, pop culture generational analysis is often so shallow, haphazard, and/or commercialized, that it typically only blathers about every other generation. There's an accordion discourse, which fixates on alternating generations (Greatest, Boomers, Millennials) while largely ignoring the generations between them (Silent, X, Z). As a result, Baby Boomers dominated popular discourse for a long time.
However, Baby Boomers have recently been knocked off their demographic perch. There are now more Millennials than boomers in the U.S. population, and these relative youngens are increasingly the subject of America's generational fascination. As such, they catch a lot of flak, much of it head smackingly stupid. I recently came across a stunning example of this vapid chatter while drinking a blueberry beer in a Lake Placid tavern.
Yes, that Lake Placid, two-time Winter Olympic town and scene of the 1980 Miracle on Ice. And yes, blueberry beer. It was actually quite good, thank you very much, Judgy McJudgerson.
by Brooks Riley
by Dave Maier
Clicking, we do find another reference to our ballplayer (referring to his “walk up music,” which is typically played over the PA as a batter approaches the plate to bat, although in this case since our man is a pitcher and plays in the AL, that probably hasn’t happened all year). But we also find several references to another person entirely. One of them reports the sad news that this person, an accomplished sound artist with many releases to his name, recently passed away at a tragically young age.
The Trump campaign is known to have targeted NCIS viewers. Why? What appeal would a show like NCIS have for Trump voters?
The honor to serve
Let’s look at a scene from an episode in season seven, which started airing in 2009. The episode is called “One Shot, One Kill”. It opens in a video game arcade where some teen-aged boys are blown away by the skill of Marine Corps sergeant. We cut to a recruiting office where the sergeant is giving the boys the hard sell about hitching up. He’s talking about Iraq: “Been in the corps 16 years. Closest I’ve ever come to a bullet is…” Shatter! Wham! Splatt! He’s shot. Slumps over on the desk.
Gibbs and his team are called in to investigate. In the course of their investigation the recruiter who replaces the first one is also shot. In both cases, sitting at the desk, shot from long distance, through the window. Sniper.
Gibbs decides he’s got to go under cover. He’ll pretend to be a Marine recruiter, which will be easy form him as he had once been a Marine. To protect Gibbs bullet-proof glass is placed in the window and he wears a bullet-proof vest. Three microphones are placed outside so that, when the shooter fires, their Forensic Specialist, Abby Sciuto, can pick up the sound and use it to triangulate the shooter’s location. We then scoot over there and make the arrest.
We’re in the recruiting office, Gibbs looking sharp in his old Marine uniform. One of his Senior Agents, Kate Todd, is in uniform as a captain. She’s there to profile potential recruits as they visit they office. The major who heads the recruiting unit wants to stay; after all, he’s lost two men to this sniper. Gibbs objects. The major insists.
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse
Aristotle's insight seems undeniable, but nearly vacuous. To identify happiness as the ultimate aim of human action is simply to assert that we tend to do what we think will bring us happiness. It is to say that when we act, we act ultimately for the sake of what we take to be happiness. As appearances can be deceiving, all of the deep questions remain.
Perhaps this is why Aristotle affirmed also that happiness is the culmination of all of the good things a human life could manifest. He declared that the truly happy person not only derives great enjoyment from living, but also is morally and cognitively flawless. In fact, Aristotle goes so far as to affirm that the happy person necessarily has friends, good looks, health, and wealth. And, as if these advantages were not enough, he holds further that the happy person is invulnerable even to misfortune and bad luck. According to Aristotle, then, happiness is not simply that for the sake of which we act; it is also that which renders a human life complete, lacking nothing that could improve it. It is no wonder that Aristotle also thought that happiness is rare.
Few today subscribe to the view that complete success in every evaluative dimension is necessary for happiness. Surely a person could be happy but not especially beautiful or wealthy. It is important to note, however, that those who affirm this more modest view often take their insight to show that things like wealth and beauty are not really the incontrovertible goods that they often appear to be. That is, the claim that one might be happy in the absence of wealth and good looks is most often accompanied by the rider that these latter attributes are not especially valuable after all. Consequently, the core of Aristotle's second claim is retained, albeit in a moderated form: the happy life manifests not every good that a human life could realize, but all of the really important goods that a human life could realize.
Antony
—I imagine you still playing
You said to me,
unclejim teach me guitar,
and what little I knew I did
You took it and flew, a musical id,
and the places you flew, the music that slid
from fingers to strings was by god a grace bridge,
the kind walked on in skies where geese are
where love and you are
where god's hid
and all
is
.
Jim Culleny
9/7/17
by Daniel Ranard
how do you know the moon
is moving: see the dry
casting of the beach worm
dissolve at the
delicate rising touch:
–A.R. Ammons, in Expressions of Sea Level
During the August eclipse, I overheard a funny bit of philosophy. I'll tell it verbatim, I swear. Tree branches had enclosed a stretch of path in Central Park, where sunlight fell through small openings in the leaves. The light cast hundreds of crescent suns along the asphalt: pinhole images, a natural camera obscura. Beside me, a mother and two children stared at the ground, confused, starting to understand. The father ushered them onward. "It's just a representation of the eclipse we tried to see earlier," he said, and they left.
You probably sympathize with the man. Today it's all images, images; and what about the real thing? So I've compiled a helpful list of ways (for next time) to encounter the eclipse as it truly is.
