Welp, I made it. Sixty-four trips around the sun.
Happy 64th birthday to me, born on this day in 1960.
I’m off the celebrate, as best a person my age can. Enjoy the weekend!
Category: life
A week without news
What happened when I decided to heavily curtail my media consumption
I’d gotten sick and tired of the news — and even more weary of the distortions and reverberations of news and pseudo-news that skittered around the social media universe like ripples from a thousand stones thrown simultaneously into a sludgy pond. Stories and rumors of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, the backlash to Taylor Swift’s announced support for Kamala Harris, the hate and vitriol spewing forth on cable news and X, which Elon Musk, despite his supposed commitment to making the platform a space for free speech, has turned into a raging hate machine — all of it was taking its toll on my soul and psyche.
So I decided to heavily curtail my consumption of news and news-related information. I could go without news for a week, I thought to myself. It wouldn’t be easy for an info-junkie like me, but I would do my best.
Continue reading “A week without news”Windows on the World
This morning, on the twenty-third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I reflected on my one and only visit to Windows on the World, the restaurant located at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Both towers of the WTC, as we now know, collapsed after the planes crashed into them on that terrible day.
Continue reading “Windows on the World”‘American Fiction’ and what stories get told
Who gets to decide which novels are made accessible to the broader public?
Among the Academy Award nominees for best picture that got trampled by the Oppenheimer juggernaut was “American Fiction,” a movie about writers, writing and the publishing business. The movie has a lot to say about the state of publishing and its gatekeeping function. Who gets to decide which novels are made accessible to the broader public? By extension, the movie’s message also applies to other art forms, and to the business of marketing and promoting books, films, music, and other works of art.
Review: ‘Works Well With Others,’ by Ross McCammon
One of the most helpful business books I’ve ever read (Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up) was written by a columnist for Esquire (Stanley Bing, who has since left that magazine to write for Fortune). So when I heard that another Esquire columnist (Ross McCammon) had written a business book, I was eager to give it a read. Continue reading “Review: ‘Works Well With Others,’ by Ross McCammon”