Each week (give or take one or two here and there) I share three things I like – It could be a book, a movie, a podcast, an album, a photo, an article, a restaurant, a food item, a beverage, or anything else I simply enjoy and think you might too. You can find a whole pile of things, especially books, I like and recommend HERE.
1) The Pitt
When I hear a TV show described as a “medical drama” I immediately disregard because that simple means “medical soap opera” or “medical whodunnit” (See: Grey’s Anatomy or House). Neither of those kinds of shows holds much interest for me. So when The Pitt started getting buzz I wasn’t even skeptical, I just ignored it. America tends to have bad taste after all. But there comes a point when the critical acclaim and the praise for particular performances is impossible to ignore, so my wife and I decided to give it a shot. And it is phenomenal. It is a medical procedural, but not a drama or whodunnit. Each season takes place over the course of a single shift in the emergency and trauma unit at a Pittsburgh hospital. It is tense, but not with engineered suspense. The doctors are not mad geniuses, but they are highly skilled. What makes the show brilliant is the humanity around the medical cases. The interactions between doctor and patient, the centripetal force of the nurses who hold things together, the conflicts between egos, the intentional empathy toward the suffering, and I could go on and on. (Who knows, I might write a longer piece on the Pitt). It is not a light show, but neither is it a brooding dark one. It is an intense, human, wonderfully acted drama in the truest sense of the word.
2) A Bonfire
Life moves fast and is full of tension and complication. At the end of a full day or week it is hard to slow down and help my mind transition to rest. Sitting down to read demands a force of will I sometimes don’t have. Watching a movie or show sometimes feels like ingesting more tension rather than resting. But a bonfire, on a lovely spring night, is just the thing. Building the fire is a brief project that demands attention but not thought and serves as an off ramp for the brain. From that point on the fire is the center of relaxation. Maybe it is the object of vacant staring. Maybe it it is the center of a social gathering. Sometimes it serves as an activity–stoking, building, stirring. Once you settle in to an adirondack chair, gravity will keep you firmly planted in relaxation until the fire burns low.
3) “Homesick” by The Lone Bellow
I’ve loved the Lone Bellow’s music since their debut album years ago. This song isn’t one of their biggest hits, but it’s lovely.
