What Is Enlightenment?Immanuel Kant 1 Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.)…

I don’t actually watch TV, I get the Reader’s Digest condensed version on YouTube. You see, I actually prefer to get my news through the filter of comedy. At this particular moment in history, life is a binary choice. You can either laugh or you can cry. So I browse through my late night subscriptions…

I have directed dozens of plays and operas and musicals. God I hate directors. They’re just so….bossy. But that’s not really what this post is about. It’s about ego. Years ago, when I was learning the craft as a young actor, I sucked. Not as an actor, but as a person. You see, it is…

No matter which worldview you come with, smile. I know that I am. It was an odd sense when it first happened. At the end of all of the tumult, I looked over at the AP newsfeed and the number flipped like the scorecard at a little league game. It was like taking a cleanse.…

Lordy Lordy. I sit at my computer in the wee hours staring at the Associated Press data. It isn’t moving I can only think they have found a way to make time stop. We haven’t been looking big picture enough. While we have been listening to the whining and the fur on our backs has…

Its almost a line from a sitcom. We might even associate it with the banter a couple might use when quarrelling. “What have you done for me lately? For the past 4 years a single tiny word has changed without notice to “What have you done TO me lately”. It happened so quickly that we…

The calliope whistles merrily as the circus comes to town. You know what’s coming as the parade turns the corner and you get a full view of the menagerie of beasts and freaks, clowns and characters. It’s daylight, but somehow both dark and light at the same time. Chiaroscuro. The lightness comes from painted faces…

Yes, from that famous case from the 1932 Supreme Court decision “Benign v Banal” where it was was ruled that for the average citizen it is far better to be aligned with kindness than inanity. I think of the word “benign” and can’t help but hear Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice: “It’s not a tumor”. Granted, I…