Like Cars was to Pixar, Dumbo was to the boyish genius Walt Disney: a sign that at his worst he was capable of producing mere excellence. Dumbo is an extended short and not quite a fairy tale and it is also the first film in the series that did not change everything or break new ground for the audience. The movie lost the cover of Time Magazine, back when that was the place for what mattered to the Establishment, to... Read more
Hope was frustrated: “Music is music.” She looked at me and realized that her new husband saw pictures instead of hearing music. My auditory sense was dominated by my visual sense to the point that I was deprived of an excellent musical experience. “You think of it all as a story . . . like you must write Fantasia for every piece.” She was right. Whenever I listened to music, my mind would drift and I would begin to think... Read more
There was once a little boy in West Virginia who received a puppet. He played with it and the toys of his time lasted and lasted. They were built for love and so the little boy grew up, became a dad, kept his puppet, until his son found the little wooden head in his dad’s sock drawer. That has how I first found Pinocchio and I loved him almost to death. Puppets were playthings and I used them to create... Read more
Disney insists that the first of its full length animated features is “still the fairest one of all.” And the comment is fair. By the Pixar standards of today, the film is very simple, but then it is creating the genre that Pixar has mastered. The film is still fairly good by any standard and exudes a loveliness, a sense of fairy, that is missing from later Disney films in Walt’s own era, let alone the ugliness of films such... Read more
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. So I was told in my childhood by the television. I believed it then, and I believe it now. Some waste their minds on purpose, some have waste thrust upon them, and some waste a mind after a good start. For the fool, the man who wastes a good mind for no good reason, the Book of Proverbs has many concise lessons. For the victim of educational abuse, a Christian stands in... Read more
Dante understood that some of us are not saints like Beatrice or Lucy. We must go the long way to God and not the short path for simple, pure souls. I have not journeyed through Hell, but some parts of my life have felt like Purgatory and so I can testify to this truth. Christianity is a religion of the Cross: pain and then pleasure. Why? Partly because humans are broken, but mostly because this is good for us. Pleasure... Read more
Tokenism is one of the great intellectual plagues of our time, infecting right and left, Christians and non-Christians. Tokenism is making a big deal out of a small example. Tokenism is toxic when a company thinks hiring one person of color solves their “diversity problem.” Tokenism is also debilitating when one pretends that one’s little corner of reality represents a “trend” or another point of view. Tiny minorities are sometimes correct, but they should not claim “equality.” I am a... Read more
Higher education faces imminent peril, but most schools are avoiding solutions the way a vampire avoids sunlight. The heart of the problem is the cost and the key to cost has been the explosion in administrators, but asking those very administers to solve the problem invites them (as they think) to hire more administrators to solve the problem of too many administrators. How do you know if you are going to a school in trouble? Google the school’s 990 and... Read more
I woke up after doom had come and I had nobody to blame for it but myself. My parents were excellent, my church winsome, and my education better than I deserved, but I wanted more. The best part of me wanted Jesus and a relationship with Him. Maybe. Or it could easily have been that all I wanted was something other than what I had. The luxury of happiness, security, and enough to eat gave me the freedom to long... Read more
What is sin? At the very least, sin is anything that breaks or mars the goodness of God’s world. Let us take a very simple plant: tobacco. It is good and God made it good. There is no sin in it and there must be hundreds of uses of the stuff that would cause no harm. If nothing else, it is green and beautiful to the eye. God created tobacco, but men decided to overindulge* in pipeweed in a way... Read more
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