MOCKINGBIRD

This summer, three things have dominated my thought life:

Why remember something, or anything, when you have a world of pleasant oblivion at your fingertips? Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey puts that question front and center, with Odysseus, prompted by his seven-year lover and patron Calypso, struggling to get the tale out before he eats another lotus petal. What is worth remembering, and ...

1. First up, on My Unsung Hero, NPR tells the story of Solitaire Miles (name inspired by the Bond girl), who nearly died at the age of eighteen from medical malpractice. Solitaire’s mother ru...

Welcome back, dear friends, to Mockingbird’s Spooky Summer series! In this, our last installment, we will discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 film — possibly his greatest — Signs. Ostensibly about an alien invasion, Signs examines the signs of God’s providence and shows how we can push those signs away, but at some point we have to reckon with the reality ...

Summer vacations are here, and my family recently headed into the eastern Sierra Nevadas for ours. We stayed in a low-amenities cabin in a small resort on the shores of a beautiful mountain lake, booked several months ago in the most analog process I’ve encountered in some time. With no online reservation option, we had to call and talk to an actual human to make the reservat...