School bus reflection under the moon and stars at Eagle Field — by Joe Reifer

Planes, helicopters, old WWII housing, star trails, and a big full moon — a new gallery of night photography from Eagle Field is on my portfolio website.

Watching
Film historian Mark Cousins narrates the epic The Story of Film: An Odyssey with a mellow Northern Irish lilt. Available streaming on Netflix, this documentary tells the history of cinema in fifteen 1-hour episodes. The mix of film clips and interviews is really well balanced. Big thanks to David Dasinger for turning me on to this series.

Fastest is a documentary about MotoGP racing that briefly covers the history of the sport, and dives into the career of Valentino Rossi. Narrated by Ewan McGregor, this one is a must-see for any motorsports fan. Available streaming on Netflix or Amazon.

Reading
I want my hat back is a deadpan children’s book about a bear who’s looking for his lost hat. Or maybe it’s a koan. This book is about determination, desire, repetition, being polite, and how words communicate beneath the surface. Minutes to read, days to ponder and chuckle about.

Tenth of December: Stories is the latest collection of stories from George Saunders. Propelled into the mainstream by an over-the-top New York Times review, Saunders is reaching a whole new audience. I’d read some of these pieces in the New Yorker, and others are new for me. If you’ve never read Saunders before, this is a good place to start.

Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures picks up where Carl Sagan left off with the photos sent into space on Voyager. Paglen updates mankind’s portfolio with a new selection of 100 images. And then he goes to MIT to figure out how to make this transmission last a long time. The portfolio gets attached to a satellite and launched into orbit. This is some big “what if” thinking that is backed up by some serious doing. Highly recommended.

Listening
I recently revisited Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I wasn’t paying much attention to indie rock when this came  out. This album has been in heavy rotation over the last 2 months and it gives me the chills. Jeff Mangum pushes his voice and emotions to the limit.

LPs don’t fit in your pocket. I still have about 250 records that I rarely listen to. The ART USB Phono Plus lets you hook a turntable up to your computer, and get those records onto your iPhone. A cool little device that pays for itself quickly if you have a lot of albums to digitize.