I am missing the arrogance of my stupid youth. When did I get so embarrassed of making a fool of myself? Why wasn’t I ashamed of myself then? The lack of shame usually works for my college students, in that they dare to say and do all kinds of productive things in my classes. It [...]
Archive for the ‘Future’ category
Our nightmare
What can we say about the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? There are the photos of marshes turned into toxic waste dumps and dying seabirds coated with crude. There’s the scale of the spill, which BP has been hiding (with apparent governmental collusion or acquiescence) the entire time. In any case, [...]
Closing time
(Part One here.) My friends, I have joined a secret society. It hides in plain sight. Some of you are members already. Some of you aspire to be. Others remain proudly free of the constant demands, financial obligations, and emotional binds the society exacts from its members. To the latter of you, I say: congratulations. [...]
La maison, c’est moi
My family religiously observed the tradition of Sunday dinner (literally, since, as many readers know, family time is a Mormon fetish). Every other week we gathered for the whole evening⎯the grandparents, the siblings, and us, the first cousins. To say the teenaged me took these get-togethers for granted would be a huge understatement, but I [...]
Dave’s Top 20/Bottom 10/Questionable 5 for 2009
So back in college, I worked for an off-campus student paper that some of you are familiar with. One of our longstanding features was a Top 20/Bottom 10, a concise and witty summing-up of the past week’s news. One of my favorite things about the feature was that the format made you focus on good [...]
Marathon minion
I suppose watching a marathon is not as hard as running one. Spectators do not get as sweaty. Some sit in lawn chairs, but most stand up, wedged against barriers and each other. There is not much movement on the sidelines. The cheerleaders can only tip toe up and down, squinting, trying to discern one [...]
The big blues marble
I first heard about global warming in the early ’80s. It was reported on by a local newscast, probably WPIX. I remember the jolly, post-story wrap up: So New York might be as warm as Florida one day? Wow, that sounds great! To recap our top story: beloved Yankee, Reggie Jackson, was traded to the [...]
The discreet charm of the 40th birthday
A few weeks from now I will turn 40. It’s made me a little reflective lately. I’ve been thinking about birthdays and the important part they play in organizing the life process. Up until now birthdays have organized my life according to a series of very momentous rights of passage. They have marked out a [...]
This I believe (pessimist edition)
I believe that this is just the beginning. I believe that the economy will get worse and worse, as housing prices keep falling and unemployment keeps rising and corporations keep failing. I believe that, at some point, not only will it be difficult to find a job, it will be impossible—in fact, eventually the very [...]
