Retirement Should Be Festive
Go look for soulmates in Paris, as Martha Gellhorn did. Loosen lifelong inhibitions in Tahiti. Retire in Mexico.
Dispatches
Bob Putnam, My First Man, Is Gone
Though Bob Putnam was old enough to be my father and he nurtured and supported me, as he did for hundreds of other young creative artists, I would not say he was a father figure. I would expect a father to be an authority figure. Bob was an anti-authority figure.
The Tension in “Rural Issues”: TCR at the DNC
The tension was there for anyone to see, as when the chair of the DNC Rural Council, Kylie Oversen, told a TV station in her home state of North Dakota that “a lot of rural Democrats get overlooked, as they are in flyover states and red states.”
The Son I Created
Before doubt, angst, and a few medical issues canceled our plans to have kids, I always thought I would want a boy. Kindroid can give me one!
“Can You Feel Me?”: TCR at the DNC
I can hardly put into words how weird (since that is the Democrats’ own word of the month) it was to see dozens of international figures, including Harris and her husband, the Walzes, the Clintons, the Obamas, Bernie Sanders, Lil Jon, Common, and Stevie Wonder, all in short order. For most of the time, however, I sat there feeling either dead inside or professionally Zen, in service to hoping to see what was really going on apart from marketing tricks.
Why Food Is Less Healthy and Less Tasty
Nobody mentioned that we would be eating more because we were still craving the kind of taste we barely remembered, and we were still in need of the vitamins and minerals that had been leached from these big juicy hollow tomatoes and this gluteny, mineral-stripped wheat.
Recruiting Veterans: TCR at the DNC
Veterans hold a trove of experience for the country and, if the speakers this day are to be believed, a relatively sure path to leadership and personal sacrifice. But it should be pointed out that the talk at the meeting was 100 percent unidirectional, from the politicians to the attendees. No questions or other input were permitted.
What a Mess: TCR at the DNC
My experience with the DNC’s event has been not only long walks and great expense, but closed media offices, people who think they know but do not know, absent or last-minute email information that ends up limiting reporting, and being denied access to meetings on the basis of limited seating, where in reality there are hundreds of empty chairs.
Business and Entertainment: TCR at the DNC
Conventions are celebrations of future power not yet won, so there must be a show commensurate with the spoils. The DNC is being held in the two biggest buildings in Chicago, which not coincidentally celebrate the highest powers in our land: business, in the shape of McCormick Place, more commonly used for enormous trade shows; and entertainment, represented by the United Center arena.
Demure, Mindful, Cutesy
I had to know how all this began. A beauty influencer named Jools Lebron (joolieannie on TikTok) posted it, I read first. She was at least funny. “See how I do my makeup for work? Very demure, very mindful…. A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure.”