Bob Schwartz

Here is one thing I’ve learned from having a near-infinite choice of media—music, movies, TV, books—to consume. The more I search, I still go back to the greats to relisten, rewatch, reread.

Today, after a search, I ended up at Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), which I’ve watched countless times. It is fifty years old, so you do hear some newer generation movie aficionados saying “I don’t get why it is on so many best of lists.” Best of lists are never objective, even those generated by “experts”, because we are all still affected by different tastes.

But in the opinion of many lists, including mine, Chinatown is one of the greats, near the top. You can find millions of words written and spoken about it, so I won’t add to them. I will say that if you love movies as entertainment and/or as craft, you owe it to yourself to watch Chinatown.

Maybe you will never watch it again. Maybe you will think about the two hours and ten minutes you could have spent doing something else. Or maybe like me, you will watch it again and again, relishing and remembering every scene.

Hurricanes and other storms don’t recognize American state borders. That’s a fact. Some states may be harder hit than others, but a number of states can be severely affected at once.

Which is just one of the reasons federal involvement is essential and mandated by Congress. Yet up to this moment, the demand from the administration is that the states take care when disaster strikes, to the point of eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It isn’t necessary to list all the states that each of our worst hurricanes have devastated. We can hope against hope that future hurricanes, including this season, limit any damage to just one state, if there is damage at all.

Hard realities make ideologically-driven politicians and officials sound stupid. If sounding stupid is all it is.

Flowers awake

At six a.m. the flowers coyly closed
Soon the sun is high, hot and bright
The flowers open petals spread
In colored invitation
To eye and heart, bee and hummingbird
Awake

© 2025 by Bob Schwartz

Let’s make a deal.

Transactions are part of life.

Commerce and trade, individual and institutional, depend on it. It is the same for personal, social and even religious dynamics. This for that. Do this to get that.

Transactions can become a dominant ideology and style. Let’s call it total transactionalism. Everything becomes a transaction.

We don’t have to look far to see this on display. We may have to look a little harder to see it in ourselves.

We can’t stop all transacting and can’t ask others to stop all transacting. We might investigate how much of what goes on and what we do is a transaction. We can determine whether that transactionalism is for the best.

It probably isn’t.

© 2025 by Bob Schwartz