Mr. Button, 81, Journalism Guru

Waipahu Rest in Peace, Mr. Button.

(From his 1989 induction into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame:

Robert Lockwood Button, the first high school teacher to be inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, has been the adviser of The Tower, the award-winning Grosse Pointe South High School weekly newspaper, for more than 23 years.

The success of his students is perhaps the best testimony to his excellence in teaching, and his quiet suggestions and good- humored nature foster a learning environment in which students can – and do – excel.

During the summers he is in demand to teach at journalism workshops across the country and continues to sharpen his skills as a copy editor and reporter for the Detroit Free Press. He is also the author of 12 handbooks and several articles on scholastic publications. His inspiration extends to other publication advisers. Larry Mack of Jackson High School said it best: “Bob just never lets up; his dedication to excellence in journalism, his absolute love for the challenge of education young journalists serve as a model for us all.”

When Great Trees Fall

By Maya Angelou

When great trees fall, 
rocks on distant hills shudder, 
lions hunker down 
in tall grasses, 
and even elephants 
lumber after safety. 

When great trees fall 
in forests, 
small things recoil into silence, 
their senses 
eroded beyond fear. 

When great souls die, 
the air around us becomes 
light, rare, sterile. 
We breathe, briefly. 
Our eyes, briefly, 
see with 
a hurtful clarity. 
Our memory, suddenly sharpened, 
examines, 
gnaws on kind words 
unsaid, 
promised walks 
never taken. 

Great souls die and 
our reality, bound to 
them, takes leave of us. 
Our souls, 
dependent upon their 
nurture, 
now shrink, wizened. 
Our minds, formed 
and informed by their 
radiance, 
fall away. 
We are not so much maddened 
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance 
of dark, cold 
caves. 

And when great souls die, 
after a period peace blooms, 
slowly and always 
irregularly. Spaces fill 
with a kind of 
soothing electric vibration. 
Our senses, restored, never 
to be the same, whisper to us. 
They existed. They existed. 
We can be. Be and be 
better. For they existed.

Licorice Pizza: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Sticky L.A. Valentine

Paul Thomas Anderson is to the San Fernando Valley what Woody Allen is to Manhattan.

Sure, Quentin Tarantino grew up here. Chinatown is here. And Hollywood has one address.

But Anderson represents the sprawling heart of the Valley. Half Stanley Kubrick, half strip shopping mall, Anderson is the avatar for the 21st Century California filmmaker. And ‘Licorice Pizza’ the 21st Century California movie, tye-dyed in nostalgia for an era that may or may not have existed. But its appeal undeniably did.

In a way, ‘Pizza’ is the embodiment of nostalgia without sentiment, capturing a time and place in the 1970s when Nixon was on TV, Vin Scully called Dodger games on radio, gas lines formed because of shortages, and a boss could brazenly slap the behind of his female employee without fear of repercussions.

At its core, the movie is a peculiar love story, one involving Gary (Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), who’s about to turn 16, and the older Alana (Alana Haim, of the rock band), who finds direction in an otherwise unfocused life thanks to Gary’s get-rich-quick schemes, which include peddling water beds.

A few actual ’70s characters find their way into the pair’s Hollywood-heavy plot, with Bradley Cooper portraying producer Jon Peters as a wildly flamboyant lunatic who actually purchases one of the beds. Sean Penn also turns up as an actor (the name is changed, but only slightly) full of strange stories, although it’s not entirely clear that he can separate reality from his movies.

‘Licorice Pizza’ really doesn’t have much of a plot; instead its a ‘Dazed and Confused’ style series of loosely connected episodes, in a way that becomes more obvious during the second half. Nor does it really address some of the nagging questions about Alana, whose periodic tantrums are among the film’s only poorly written scenes.

Those disclaimers aside, for the most part Anderson (who has directed a number of Haim videos since his last film, “Phantom Thread”) has delivered another highly entertaining movie, capturing a very particular time but also the enduring and universal nature of relationships developing in the most unexpected ways.

The title, incidentally, comes from a chain of record stores that were popular in the ’70s but no longer exist — a fitting symbol of the desire to give this bygone era another spin.

Anderson, the director of ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘There Will Be Blood,’ has made perhaps his most sentimental film yet. More importantly, ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a movie Hollywood desperately sought mid-pandemic: one with heart.