Adventures in Words

     Renate Reinsve in “The Worst Person in the World.”  Neon image via IMDB Super Bowl LVI's halftime show kicked off a commotion on nextdoor.com. The oldsters – the group formerly known as baby boomers – were up in arms. In case you're not familiar with with nextdoor.com – good for you if you're not – it's the internet's version of your neighborhood. In this realm keystrokes have replaced knocking on a neighbor's door to borrow an egg or cup of flour. I'm on it twice – in Kula where our house is but we're not; and in Tucson where we inadvertently live these days. Each nextdoor locale has its qualities – there are some awesome nature photographers in Tucson, posting hummingbirds, owls, coyotes, and the splendor of the desert captured through their lenses. But mostly I'm not a fan. Under the guise of creating communities from Arizona to Hawaii, nextdoor.com winds up providing more rabbit holes to get lost and waste time in. At least the rabbit holes

                                                                                                                        Disney image via IMDB When Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday morning, “Encanto” was a foregone conclusion in the animation category. Smart money's betting on it to win the whole thing. The reasons are simple. It comes from Disney, the entertainment behemoth that literally wrote the book when it comes to cartoons. With the acquisition of Pixar and Marvel, the corporation has expanded beyond Walt Disney's wildest dreams of shaping young imaginations into his own magic kingdom. In Walt's day when I was a kid, “Someday my prince will come,” pretty much said it all. That would cost lots in therapy bills in ensuing years for little girls who grew up with Disney dreams. Following its founder's death in 1966, the Disney company spent several years floundering, unable to navigate those a-changin' times, paralyzed by the question, “What would Walt do?