Miller Time

UNITED STATES—It was splendid, driving home from the university and taking the scenic route, winding down Sunset Boulevard, where all is green, dark and shady. You pass by the monastery, the route punctuated by green lights and yellow lights that blink and flash. The screams of children wafted through the open cabriolet window, down a crack. Danielle shivered for...

UNITED STATES—The week of savage Black Friday crowds we would do well to consider loving neglect, the counterpart of radical love, discussed last week. Accepting this concept when dealing with others may add a degree of peace to the season some call the most harried time of the year. Loving neglect is where a laissez-faire environment is created for the...

UNITED STATES—Radical love is to let play out the intention that a kind impulse dwells in others as it does in oneself. Goethe said something to the effect that if you treat people as if they displayed good qualities, they will actually start to display them. Radical love exalts kindness beyond one's own skin and the empathetic view of being...

UNITED STATES—Comic strips were a window onto the world for Gilbert. They provided all his major news and gave him the veneer of being a well-informed person, aware of the latest brouhaha, literate in pop culture because artists like Sean Hillenbrand loaded their strips with such stuff as well as steadily mined a rich vein of politically incorrectness and...

UNITED STATES—It all comes to a head for Agnes and her roommate. I said, Agnes, you came to share my apartment, and you've taken it over. My own apartment isn't mine and I wait on you hand and foot. Everybody around here has to pull their own weight. How can I be a nurse for other people if I...

UNITED STATES—Agnes had the idea that we could share the apartment. We could get cable TV and it wouldn't be so lonely, and she could bring her furniture. She had nice furniture, fruitwood. It reminded me of Rancho Grande where we liked to go on margarita Fridays. "It will be fun," Agnes said. It was fun for a while, and then...

UNITED STATES—I did an astonishing amount of scanning and reading that morning in Atwater Village going through that Orson box. There Orson's screenplays from the last decade of his life had been carefully guarded by a woman who had a typing service when the Selectric was king. If "The Big Brass Ring" was arch and the adjective brilliant attached to...

UNITED STATES—Astonishing news: 33 years after calling it quits on Earth, Orson Welles is back, strong as ever, with his last motion picture being redeemed from legendary limbo by Netflix, the oft-described, seldom seen “The Other Side of the Wind.” This brings to mind a morning spent in Atwater Village opening a box of Orson’s final screenplays. Liz Derby was...

UNITED STATES—"Well, I was going around the corner and he was sitting on the sidewalk, nursing a beer. And he said do you have any change?" "And then what happened?" "I told him I didn't have any. I said I didn't have any, but I could go get some at my apartment." "That was very nice of you. There are not many...

UNITED STATES—"I don't envy your position… And what did you do?" "I told him firmly and in no uncertain terms to remove his hands from my eyes." "I'm sure you comported yourself every inch a lady," Mr. Disney said.  "Could you demonstrate exactly what Mickey did?  Please come around my desk. I put my hands over Mr. Disney's eyes, just as Mickey...