Consulting the Cloister
It is all too easy to feel crazy and old when you are alone—and you do stop caring what other people think, because there are so few opportunities to guess.
Dispatches
Raising Sons in the South
“Unemployed coal miner and wife living in old barn. Herrin, Illinois.” Arthur Rothstein, 1939. FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, fsa 8b36448.
We were driving to visit my hometown, and my elder son wanted to know if I thought that where I grew up was The South.
I did not…
The Pie Is Only How Big?
Human beings (and dogs) behave better when they are calm, and they are calm when they know there is enough. The cool truth beneath all the seething anger is that wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Rather than fix that, Americans have decided to scrap amongst themselves for what is left. The enemy is not the few who own the pie but the rivals who want a piece.
On Mosquitoes and Mass Murder
Plumped up with blood and rot and supremely content, mosquitoes will mate, often in midair.
Internet Brilliance and Endurance
I was bothered for a time: how did the creative talent apparent in the viral video not produce more of what was enjoyed so widely, if only for use as a promotional tool? %
“Negative Energy”—Physics or Fantasy?
Negative energy is shorthand for a whole lot of variables we would rather not, often cannot, itemize.But as a summary of subtle perceptions, it is entirely valid.
Father Soldier Son: This One Hurts
There are many skillful touches to the documentary film “Father, Soldier, Son,” such as juxtapositions of images of the Eisch children, looking at photos of their father overseas, with a shepherd child in Afghanistan staring at a Blackhawk helicopter spinning its rotors in the dust.
Better We Should Be at War
(Photo by Dick DeMarsico for the New York World-Telegram, now in the Library of Congress)
“What would you rather go through, a war or a pandemic?” I asked a friend the other day.
She thought a minute. “A pandemic. That way I’ve at least got a little control over my…
Serving Systems
Screen shot of video of Walmart shoppers in Minnesota today.
My son and I were looking up facts about WWII’s Pacific Theater, because we had been talking about my father’s service there. It is always a shock to re-encounter the scale of that war, especially the loss…
A Little Night Music
(Photo by Jörg Schreier via Flickr)
The night was muggy, a storm grumbling as it approached, and I was rushing the dog through a boring walk around the block. Then I heard it.
A warm strum of guitar chords, intricate and lilting. Not a recording. Live.
Funny, how quickly you…