I don’t write about music, mostly because I don’t know anything about music. I can’t sing, don’t play an instrument, and couldn’t explain the difference between melody and harmony, even on an open-book test. I’m lucky if I can figure out how to turn on the radio. Once in a while I find myself reading… [Read more…]
January 10, 2012
Most of us spent our childhoods bouncing back and forth between our own wants and the demands of various authority figures. In many ways, it seemed like some kind of game that we woke up in the middle of, and that required us to figure out the rules as we went along. Gradually, through a… [Read more…]
December 31, 2011
Life seems to be getting more and more complicated. You must’ve noticed that, because even I’ve noticed it, and believe me, a lot of things escape my attention. For example, I frequently walk around for the better part of a day with a dryer sheet hanging out from the bottom of my pants. Last week,… [Read more…]
December 23, 2011
One Christmas Eve in the early 1960s, my mother told me to go to bed, because Santa Claus wouldn’t come to homes where the children were still awake. This made sense to me. What made no sense, although I didn’t give it any thought at the time, was that the Christmas tree was set up… [Read more…]
December 14, 2011
I recently learned that there are people who have made a career out of playing video games. They earn money at this, and compete in front of large crowds. This was shocking to me at first, because shooting at imaginary characters while sneaking around and climbing through rubble doesn’t seem like a marketable skill. But… [Read more…]
December 5, 2011
During a recent car trip up and down the East Coast of the United States, I found myself sitting in frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic. Much of it seemed to be caused by nervous drivers who no longer trusted their own reflexes, and who kept one foot on the brake at all times. Often accompanying these hours… [Read more…]
November 25, 2011
At the urging of a few fellow bloggers, I’ve put together and published a book of about fifty posts from the past eighteen months. I was going to say that I did it “by popular demand,” but that’s a weird expression that always makes me think of mobs of people in the streets waving torches… [Read more…]
November 19, 2011
I’ve always wanted to be smart, I guess because I grew up in a time when smart people got some respect. Albert Einstein was considered the greatest genius anybody could imagine. He was so smart, he didn’t even have to comb his hair. In a room full of brilliant people, he still got to sit… [Read more…]
November 10, 2011
On the day of my birth, I was the youngest person in my family. I know this is true for everyone who has ever been born, but I wanted to claim some special distinction, even if just for the briefest moment it took you to realize that there wasn’t anything remarkable about it. The year… [Read more…]
November 1, 2011
It’s possible that I recently learned a valuable lesson. I qualify that statement because there are certain lessons I’ve learned three hundred times in my life, and if I took an honest look, I’d have to say I need to brush up on them again. I’m even missing those bits of wisdom we were supposed… [Read more…]
January 19, 2012
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