Archive for the ‘Future’ category
Notes from Downtown
Not too long after those marches we went to in DC that so effectively stopped the war in Iraq, a friend of mine said one of those sentences that got pasted on my brain like a bumper sticker*. “Chanting in unison,” he said, “makes me ambivalent about, oh, just about everything.” I had felt this [...]
Comparative Freedom
I have often wondered where I got my inability to understand the unspoken expectations of authority. For a while I figured there was some kind of cognitive gap right in the part of the brain that might do that; it feels almost like a mechanical failure. Of course it’s almost certainly the fault of radical [...]
Old
My parents are only in their early 70s…not so old, right? Two weeks of vacation with parent 1 and then parent 2 brought me face to face with the brutal reality of our immortality. Actually, I don’t think it’s the immortality that worries me. It’s the aging. Mother has always been a challenge. Apparently, as [...]
Having a baby changes everything
“Not having kids is making aging confusing.” This was a friend’s status update. It jolted me to read it. In fact, I’m not sure how he intended it, but it took me back immediately to this documentary I watched in grad school, Daddy & Papa, about gay couples adopting kids. Now, I’ve never wanted kids. [...]
I believe that children are our future. This is not a good thing.
I had to watch in 1-minute intervals and I missed a lot of it because the part of my brain that processes language would periodically blow a fuse out of some self-preservation instinct and I would stop understanding the words. If you can watch the whole thing at a stretch without dying of vicarious embarrassment, [...]
What is it you want?
After the ball was over, after the break of morn, after the dancers’ leaving, after the stars were gone…it was about forty eight hours before I read my first piece of Internet verbiage about how the goal of marriage is an assimilationist one and how saddened the writer was to have her queerness coöpted. And [...]
Yea or Nay?
1. Fingertoe shoes: Orthopedically sensational invention that cool people wear? Or fashion disaster? 2. X-Men: Moving allegory for discrimination in our nation’s history? Or goofy comic-book franchise? 3. Anthony Weiner: Resign? Or stay? 4. Lance Armstrong: Doper? Or unfairly maligned champion? 5. Edible gift for Father’s Day? Or… a tie?:
On female power
I just graded about twenty exams in a row from students who, when asked an essay question about masculine desires and feminine gender performance in American women authors of the 17th-19th centuries, responded with sentence after sentence about how this or that character shows “female power.” And I’m going to barf if I ever see [...]
Apocalypse mom
As you may be aware, the end is nigh. When? May 21, 2011. Why? Something to do with Jesus explained here. A colleague takes her kids to an elementary school where one mom has told her son the world will end a week on Saturday. My friend is dying to ask if she’s enrolled him [...]
