Remembering recent events, following current ones...

---Two articles this week raised the issue of memory in folks getting older.  The "getting older" category clearly now includes me, something that would have been disputed not too many years ago.  In the New Yorker, 1/13 issue, John McPhee's piece is "Tabla Rasa, Fragments of Memory", as he looks back at set ups for books and essays that he did not write but had considered.  His view is that his memory is fully intact, but that it now works in a retrospective way that is different from younger days(my words, not his).  His "fragments" are entertaining.  Yesterday's New York Times Op-Ed page has an article by a neuroscientist who writes "Memory Need Not Fail Us", suggesting that for most people memory remains intact, but concerns about not recalling events, people, and places quickly or in detail leads to unnecessary doubt.  His thought, your organic computer now has much more to sort through than it did at age 40 or 50.  Yet one wonders.  Is it simply short term OCD that builds as one ages and can't stand not knowing where everything is instantly.  So what, you can't remember what you had for dinner last night but do remember exactly what you had at Sparks on East 43rd with clients in 1985 or at breakfast at the Park Hotel in Siena in 2001.  Of course, dinner last night was not memorable, those were.  Where is this going?

---Speaking of the New Yorker magazine, two articles of note in December need to be mentioned.  In the December 2nd issue,  Dexter Filkins' "Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi's India" is an alarming description of a developing ultra nationalist Hindu regime, fascist comes to mind, in that once multi-cultural country.  The December 9th edition has Jianyang Fan's "The Hong Kong Protest Movement and the Fight for the City's Soul" details the conflict there, and the mainland communist encroachment on that city's values and heritage.  Fascism, Communism, ism's very similar.

---Watching the series "Killing Eve" here via Netflix.  The televised series had been hard to follow week to week in the past, but seeing it sequentially does not make it that much clearer.  It is a complex story, as spy stories can tend to be.  Russian assassins, M-15 intelligence officers, rogue cadres, double agents, it's an effort worth making.  From the many interesting locations, the reliably cool soundtrack, and an underlying comic attitude, this is exceptional viewing, my opinion.

---Also in the current issue of  the New Yorker Evan Osnos writes about China, and his considerable expertise and background is unquestioned here.  "The Future of America's Contest With China" is a lengthy article, but at times Osnos has developed a tendency to become a preachy windbag.  His story telling of the past is much better than his current editorialized style.  It is worthwhile and at times entertaining reading about a serious subject, but no lectures please.