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Lost At Sea
"There's nothing there for you. You know that, right?"
She was on her second glass of Malbec. I was halfway through a second coffee.
"Yeah."
It was five-ish, and it was January, so it should've been cool, especially with the breeze off the water. But evening suns can be vengeful as they drown in the ocean. And there was no breeze. It wasn't stifling, but it was intrusive, and I found that presumptuous -- on whose part I didn't know. Nature's I guess.
Had it been 1992 instead of 2022, we'd ha
I know you hope I appreciate this post for more than the chuckle I got from this: “… people who let me go on uninterrupted in these pages every day.”
I remember getting a whiff of incipient decline back in the ‘80s. At the time I thought it would pass, but it didn’t, did it?
There is much in your post that will animate lunchtime conversations. The bubble in which I live includes frequent lunches with other ancient citizens. We will go over this line by line.
Sometimes I think we’re on the path of willful forgetfulness described by Ishiguro in The Buried Giant.
A very thoughtful, nuanced piece–there is so much going on in the world today that it’s hard to put it all in perspective, but this piece does a very good job of trying to. I think we all strive to (and need to) construct some coherent framework of reality to fit ourselves into–which includes understanding where we’ve been as well as where we might be going–as a way of relating to the world and finding a place for ourselves, and I commend and thank the author for bringing us along on his monthly journey to accomplish this.
These really are the flagship articles. I’ve wanted to do these kinds of pieces for a very long time, it was just a matter of figuring out the right place for them. I think they add a ton of value.
This may be your very best essay ever. One of the things I really like about your writing is the lack of pretension. You write beautiful open prose accessible to all your readers while still presenting the enlightened nuances in your arguments. I especially appreciated your observations about the degree to which the workplace has changed in ways which have altered business and society. I started my life as an academic in 1967. In those days I would look over my class and see 15 female students in a class of 50 in finance. I retired 40 years later and at the end would see the percentage number of women doubled. My first boss at the place where I spent 34 years of my career was an otherwise nice guy who had absolutely no respect for women, including his wife (although he did manage to eventually become the President at two small colleges). Ten years after my retirement my school was now led by a very bright and effective female dean (one of my former students), along with a female associate dean, MBA program head, direction of student services, and foundation manager. The faculty is also composed of close to 50% women. I remember when my wife was looking for her first job after graduation in 1967 and interviewed at a top 5 casualty insurance company for a job to lead them into their newly launched Medicare insurance service. The guy who interviewed her told her she was the best candidate he had seen but if any man, no matter how poorly qualified, wanted the job, he’d get it. We have indeed seen dramatic change in the last 50-60 years but it seems to me we just don’t want to become the nation we could be and never really will. We are still a nation of people who think success is not just winning but grinding our rivals into the dust. Far too many people see success in war as our greatest and most honorable accomplishments, a concept so sad and stupid it makes me weep. WWII ended the lives of 80-85 million people and that was an accomplishment? Since then, we haven’t really won anything and still we think we can take on the Chinese.
Yes, sir!
Not just a regular ton, a metric ton.
Yet another reason to subscribe. Thanks, H.