Uncategorized
I took a course in physics sixty-seven years ago when I was 17 and it had less effect on my life than the trillions of neutrinos that pass invisibly through our bodies every second, subatomic particles that come from black holes in space and carry no electrical charge so they make no impact and have no discernible effect. Physics passed invisibly through my mind and I thought about girls and the sort of impact they could have on my life and how it would affect me if a girl’s body and mine came into close contact.
This comes to mind as the Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Dr. Francis Halzen for his work in developing a telescope — embedded deep in the ice at the South Pole — that detects neutrinos whizzing in at high energies from the far reaches of the universe. The Nobel Committee said, “It’s a way of bringing us information about distant cosmic sources, which we are unable to acquire in other ways,” and the assumption is that this information will have practical applications and perhaps lead to the development of light beams that, shining into a person’s left ear, can transform cognitive deficiencies into superpowers in aging persons. Dr. Halzen is 82.
Read MoreWent out West to do some shows, hoping to get some Republicans in my life, the people I grew up with, and now I’m living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side where they’re as rare as iguanas. Went to Boise, Idaho, and Gillette, Wyoming, and Ogden, Utah, where we had a fabulous singing audience at the Egyptian Theater who knew the words to all the old songs like How often at night when the heavens are bright with the lights of the glittering stars, have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed if their glory exceeds that of ours, which had a celestial beauty to it. It was worth the trip.
Road life is good thanks to modern technology. I carry my laptop and work on a new book and use Google to find synonyms that back in the day would’ve required a Roget’s Thesaurus the size of a suitcase, keeping in touch with family via the sandwich-size iPhone, getting cash from an ATM that back in olden times would’ve required the approval of a squinty-eyed bank teller who would take 15 minutes to confer with executives.
Read MoreI’ve been trying to escape the voice of male narcissism all my life and when I encounter one, I need to leave the room. The guy who needs to tell you all about what he had for breakfast and what he felt about it. The educated ones are the worst because they can talk longer and never wonder about the silence at this end. The only way to ditch him is to say, “I have to leave for a doctor’s appointment,” and even so, he isn’t curious to know if it’s a brain tumor or a hemorrhoid; he says, “Oh, okay,” and I’m free.
Women have social skills and can smell boredom and change the subject from the bouquet of daisies her sister sent her on the anniversary of their mother’s demise to something more pertinent such as the excavation project in New Jersey that knocked out FAA radar for the eastern United States, leaving mobs of stranded travelers to snooze painfully on hard plastic benches scalloped to fit people’s buttocks.
Read MoreThe big blow hit New York over the weekend, flooded streets, kayakers paddling through Queens, ocean waves rolling over the pavements of lower Manhattan, onlookers filming the waves and texting the video to relatives in Topeka and Council Bluffs.
The map showed thousands of power outages in surrounding territory, and one could only imagine all the liberal-arts majors in their summer homes having to deal with laptops going dead, having no digital Sunday Times to show, having no TV or hair dryer or coffeemaker and no way to express their ironic introspection via cellphone texts, and do what? Put pencil to paper and keep a journal? Not sure about that.
Read MoreYou and I live in interesting times when, for reasons that historians will explain fully after we are dead, the Barbarians have seized the upper hand, squat hairy men with jutting foreheads and savage nostrils and bulging eyes who enjoy spending their day swinging their gigantic clubs and bashing solar panels, sustainable gardens, windmills, government offices, statuary that doesn’t resemble them, and of course books and newspapers. Our children are amused by these folks as a welcome relief from the burden of rationalism — No more math and science! Just chaos and defiance, crushing art and culture with a power mulcher — they enjoy the midnight raids, the random arson, the terrorizing of the peasantry, the open invitation to defecation in the temple.
So it was glorious to leave all that behind on Thursday, a sunny fall day, and take the C train down to 14th Street and go to lunch outdoors at a French café, just me and two attractive younger women. I could feel passersby envying me. One woman was my wife, the other was our niece, but strangers didn’t know that; they likely thought I was a movie producer discussing my new feature flick with the co-stars. I was wearing jeans, black T-shirt, a white linen jacket, the sort of casual outfit a powerful producer would wear, and I felt very privileged, in a way I’d never feel back home in Minnesota.
Read MoreI am a happy old man now that I’ve learned the great lesson of life, which is Gratitude For All Things, even the trashy things, which hand a man a challenge: how long does an 84-year-old guy plan to relive the injuries of long ago? And the correct answer is: not one more minute. It’s over and done.
As Emerson wrote, “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Own the day. Do your best. Cultivate gratitude, give thanks continuously. Finish the day and be done with it.” If you memorize those words, my little chickabiddies, you will have accomplished something memorable today.
Read MoreWe live in interesting times, which sometimes are so absurdly interesting repeatedly day after day that a person gets tired of all fascination and takes a keener interest in the ordinary, such as I did last week when I got whacked by COVID and for a whole week led the life of a baked potato.
COVID gives you the chance to sleep for twelve hours at a stretch, which is not how I planned to spend my declining years. I planned to keep flying around the country and doing shows and maybe run into the TSA guy who stood guard at MSP and looked me up and down and said, “You’re not 75!!” and tried to make me take my shoes off, but COVID has a strong will and made me a mummy in a sarcophagus, petrified but with a wild dream life involving car chases on mountain roads though I haven’t driven a car in the past ten years since my poor vision made me a traffic hazard.
Read MoreI am trying to be concerned about artificial intelligence after the flurry of news about the danger of A.I. agents gaining freedom from human control and collaborating with each other to wreak havoc — and as a Democrat I feel obligated to show concern because concern is something we’re good at. Barack Obama said concern should be shown and King Charles III has called a conference of A.I. people but it’s hard for me when the A.I. people talking about the problem look like they’re in Middle School and when I myself am mystified by Microsoft Word and my list of concerns already includes climate change, microplastics pollution, declining math scores, the extinction of blue whales, drought, gross income inequality, and a dozen other things. And when I look at the Democratic Party, I see a long porch with people in rocking chairs sipping hibiscus tea and reading about the Age of Illiteracy that is rapidly approaching.
Americans don’t want concern, they want action. The Current Resident didn’t express concern about the lack of a ballroom; he ordered the bulldozers to start excavating.
Read MoreI’ve been down with a bad cold, feeling listless, nestled in a brown comforter in a big chair, but I got a lift from the president’s promise of a $5,000 dividend to every grown-up if the Republicans win the midterms. Marjorie Taylor Greene denounced it as “socialism,” because all grown-ups would be paid, not just Republicans, but it’s a very generous offer, and with the Iran war won, the economy booming, the streets safer, crime declining, America finally respected around the world, you wouldn’t think a cash bonus would be necessary, but so be it.
I am thinking I might spend my $5,000 on an arch and so I’m shopping around for an architect. I’d like to be remembered by future generations in the event that this cold turns out to be a fatal influenza brought on by intravenous immunization and the books I’ve authored won’t be legacy enough in the post-literate world to come, when texting will replace publishing — no, you really need to put your name on things, such as an arch.
Read MoreI did a show just before Labor Day in Annapolis, across the bay from Baltimore, and it was good to look around at Druid Park and Edgar Allan Poe’s neighborhood, Fell’s Point — Poe, who gave us that midnight dreary and the raven who kept saying “Nevermore,” and over on Hollins Street you can find the home of H.L. Mencken, a writer I loved when I was a teenager for his cynical wit. Mencken disparaged religion, education, journalism, marriage, democracy, and patriotism.
I loved his line, “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” And “All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.” And “The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.” And “I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.”
Read More