From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza

The uniqueness of the film, From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza (2024), goes well beyond it being a documentary that includes an animated short made by children and a puppet show. Footage of a Palestinian being pulled from the rubble twice—one with the head of his dead friend very close to him and the other with his account that he could see body parts of his parents near him—is nothing short of chilling. Perhaps less so, yet equally stunning, are the close-ups of the legs and arms of children on which their respective parents had written the names so the bodies could be identified after a bombing. That the kids had dreams in which they erased the black ink from their skin because they refused to fathom the eventuality of having to be identified is chilling in a way that goes beyond that which film can show visually. Moving pictures can indeed go beyond the visual in what film is capable of representing and communicating to an audience. The same can be said regarding the potential of film to bring issues not only in ethics, but also in political theory and theology to a mass audience.

The full essay is at "From Ground Zero."

Taoist Climate Change on Halloween

In the midst of the intensification of the very polarized and thus divisive U.S. presidential campaign “season” (i.e., year) during its last week, Halloween of 2024 occurred in Boston, Massachusetts not only without the need of trick-or-treaters and their parents to wear winter coats, but also with the option of wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts without even having to wear a light jacket. That this was so as late as 8pm was nothing short of surreal not only to New Englanders, but also to any transplants from the northern-tier Midwestern and Plains states.  It being around 70F degrees well into the dark hours was nothing short of unprecedented, and so much so that the negative impact of the cold climate in detracting from the holiday in prior years could finally be grasped. I had realized this more than a decade earlier when I was in Miami during Halloween. There is indeed a silver lining to global warming for people living in places that are cold during the late fall, winter, and early spring seasons, even as contrary to political correctness it is to admit this even to friends. The proclivity of the human mind/brain to divide up the world in terms of dichotomies of mutually-exclusive, antagonistic poles does not necessarily fit with empirically with the real world. Taoism speaks to this.

The full essay is at "Climate Change on Halloween."