I only have one T-shirt of a book cover - and it’s Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. This was one of my favorite books in my 20s, and this summer, I feel it’s time for a throwback to this spiritually-infused adventure tale of bohemia and Buddhism in 1950s California. Read "Dharma Bums" Those of you’ve followed me for some time know I’m a major fan of the Beat Generation writers.

I became a card-carrying Lee Pace fan — or a Pacer, as we call ourselves — around 2007 when the 6’5” actor starred in ABC’s Pushing Daises. A year later, when he accompanied Sarah Michelle Gellar to the Met Gala, I knew for certain we were long game. But it wasn’t until a decade-plus later, around 2019, that something shifted (mainly my gaze) and I started to look up.  From my November 2021 Paper Magazine column headlined “Welcome to the Lee Pace-aissance”: “What fueled the recent Pace-aissance?

It seems obvious to conservatives that Jews should figure out that in politics their friends are conservatives. Conservatives support Israel and oppose the social justice activists who have a negative regard for Jews. Jews should see conservatives as allies to be cultivated. Why aren’t more Jews receptive to this idea? One reason that most Jews are reluctant to move right is that they have what I call Christophobia. This is not a fear of Christ.

My old and dear friend Johann just released his latest book, Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. That follows Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015), Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression (2018), and Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention (2022), which we covered on the Dishcast. You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app).

The more closely I read the poem, the more I see the apparently abrupt topic shifts in stanzas are actually being subtly foreshadowed in previous stanzas. The second stanza, using the image of grief for death from the first stanza says: "No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move". Floods and tempests are natural disasters, as are earthquakes, referenced in the third stanza beginning: "Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears". The third then progresses to planetary movement, and the fourth stanza holds the idea of planets in the phrase "