Craig's Corner

I play by the rules. OK, sometimes I play fast and loose – but mostly I stay within the lines. I may have skipped one day of classes during my school years. (It was Senior Skip Day and everybody was doing it so maybe that doesn’t count?) Now in my midlife living it’s rare that I even exceed the speed limit. My halcyon days of yesteryear where I was once stopped for going 110 are history. Rules and policies exist for good reason and if you don’t like them, change them. I’ve spent a lot of time working to make change where I think it’s needed. This blog is an example of drawing attention to issues and being part of conversations about how things could be different. And boy could things be different this election season. The Boston Globe reflects its core New England audience – largely progressive but with streaks of fiscal conservatism. The paper long ago endorsed John Kasich who it defines as a “mainstream conservative.” On the Democratic side Hilary Clinton received their nod o...

I'm a bit of an Anglophile: I love the United Kingdom. I spent my junior year living and studying in London. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I’ve returned several times and have just made plans to do so again. The abundance of art, music and theatre combined with an incredibly rich and diversity of people make London one of the most vibrant cities in the world. It’s also wildly expensive, busier than ever and crowded unlike it was when I lived there in the 1980’s. There has been a '" special’relationship " ever since Winston Churchill declared it in 1946. That special bond has gotten so close that its nearly indistinguishable to tell one from the other now. The Washington Post reported that the US and the UK are in active negotiations to allow “an agreement that would enable the British government to serve wiretap orders directly on US communication firms for live intercepts in criminal and national security investigations involvi...

I did not watch The Super Bowl, 2016. The third-most-watched  t elevision show in history had 111.9 million TV viewers. I wasn’t interested in the match nor in the half-time concert. I know. Send me off to a Russian gulag as I’m clearly an enemy of the state. Football never held much fascination for me – not sure whether that’s because I’m just not much of a sports guy or a tragic week in eighth grade that is better left to another blog at another time.   While it’s not my thing – I don’t begrudge others who enjoy it. I’ve always resisted the idea that taxpayers should support such sporting franchises or facilities. Usually that manifests itself in tax breaks, incentives, etc. for a team to build in a particular place over another. Beyond these breaks we now learn that the Pentagon has paid the NFL $5.4 million dollars to honor veterans. The Business Insider reports that 14 teams “accepted millions of dollars from the defense department over the course of three years i...

The Oscars bore me. Most awards shows do, but the granddaddy of them all seems especially tedious. It’s been nearly a decade since I actively worked in "the industry" so that is part of it. This is heresy to the many friends who live and breathe Hollywood. Perhaps the five years living outside of Los Angeles is part of it as well. More likely my love affair with the little golden man lost its shine in 1992 when Silence of the Lambs beat my favorite Beauty and the Beast . It still doesn’t seem right. My grumble isn’t unique – every year there are a slew of people who are overlooked for awards. In the past two years the ‘major’ categories (Picture, Acting, Directing, Writing) have only had white nominees. Therefore the Oscars are racist. Or so goes the thinking and social media rants. Missing from the conclusion is any analysis or understanding of the history or the process of the awards. Nominations for the acting categories, for example, come from those in the acti...