The Face of a Nation

In those years of the late 70s and 80s, when I was living next to Berkeley, and working in the city, I’d invade the Berkeley used bookstores over the weekends and often on weeknights. Of course Moe’s was really the place to go for book needs. At least on Telegraph Avenue, just a few blocks […]

Trust the Science

(Inspired by an article in the London Review of Books. The attack on the final absolute in the world.) __________________________________________________________________________________ Trust the Science 10/25/21 John Fraim In our post-postmodern period of extreme relativity in almost every social and cultural institution, we strive for that something that is not relative. A type of life-raft to hold onto […]

Email from a book reviewer …

___________________________________________________ Thought I’d share with you my email to Julia Hildebrand, author of the book I reviewed called Aerial Play. She is a professor of communications teaching at a Florida university. She is active in the Media Ecology Association and one of the major academics carrying McLuhan’s work forward into the new media of drones and […]

Harold

_____________________________________________ John Fraim Harold Mabern is one jazz’s greatest pianists. He was born in Memphis,and studied along saxophonists such as George Coleman and Charles Lloyd, pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. and trumpeter Booker Little. He is one of the top pianists of the 1960s hard bop scene, performing and recording with many of its finest artists. […]

Kamala

Kamala & The Utopia of Space John Fraim Press the play button above to the Schifrin song before reading below __________________________________________________________________ It’s a bizarre video that’s painful to watch. Of course, I’m talking about the video that Kamala did in conjunction with NASA as the basis for a TV series. It starts off with shots […]

Squid Game

Taking The Zeitgeist’s Temperature John Fraim Giant plastic girl in the Red Light, Green Light game from Squid Game In a Silent Way / Miles Davis ___________________________________________________________ One of the greatest series for Netflix began streaming on September 17 and in just a few weeks has skyrocketed to the top global ranking for all of […]

Emerging Artist

______________________________________ Plein air painting, is the act of painting outdoors. Before the 19th century, artists mixed their own paints from raw pigments that they often ground themselves from a variety of media. This had made for inconvenient portability and kept most painting activities confined to the studio. However, this changed in the 1800s, when tubes of oil […]

Media Psychology & A Worldview

John Fraim So many psychological connections between the Internet and the modern psyche. If only Jung was around to provide a way forward today. Or Marshall McLuhan. Or John Coltrane. Or, my own father and grandfathers I remember so well. Yet all my heroes are dead today and it is up to people like me […]