The term “one-liner” evokes comedians and jokes. Lately the one-liners that stick with me are from songs. Here are two that keep bouncing around in my head long after the music has stopped, courtesy of the Avett Brothers’ newest CD: There’s a darkness upon me flooded in light, and I am a breathing time machine. The lyrics look and read naked without the music but resonate nevertheless.
Regardless of your opinion of Ted Kennedy, this eulogy by his oldest son is something you won’t soon forget. I heard it today, on my father’s 81st birthday, while driving home from Seattle. Hard to see the road through tears.
Leave it to a child to ask an existential question that reverberates louder than the Pacific surf:
Will there still be waves if everybody’s dead?
Atticus, in the midst of his first beach vacation, received a truthful answer — and a question. Why did you wonder such a thing? Silence, except the sound of waves arriving and retreating.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.
Paul Krugman nails what many of us have sensed with growing unease. For a guy absurdly and obscenely referred to as Hitler by no-nothing enemies, Obama is a softie. He needs to become Lyndon Johnson-ish in pursuing health-care and other reforms. Ruthlessness in pursuit of what’s right and just can be a virtue.
Our son Atticus, now 4, watched part of Finding Nemo tonight. The story’s setting was relevant given the roaring surf outside our rented vacation house on the Oregon coast. Judging from his reaction to the dramatic scenes (shielding his eyes with a blanket and whimpering occasionally), we’ve overly sheltered him from TV and other insidious forms of pop culture.
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Thinking about the universe is like staring at the sun. One has to quickly turn away from the incomprehensible vastness; the combined sensations of insignificance and loneliness are too much to bear. Oddly, this video graphically illustrating the vastness makes it less painful to contemplate. But the 3-D effect of drifting past uncountable galaxies is beyond humbling, especially considering that all are moving farther from Earth at stunning speed. And the video raises the inevitable questions that contemplating the universe brings: how is it possible, and why are we here? Watching the video should be required of those among us who are perpetually puffed up with self-importance.
There was a time in this country when journalists lived to expose politicians’ lies. Today, however, some let politicians trample the truth unchallenged just when the public most needs the straight story. I’m speaking of the ludicrous claims that health-care reform proposals would establish “death panels” and give the federal government access to peoples’ bank accounts. Those who utter such naked lies merely for political gain — Sarah Palin and Michael Steele come to mind — deserve contempt. The journalists — a misnomer to be sure — deserve worse.
At 17, I wanted to be Benjamin Braddock, the intellectually gifted rebel whose persona exuded a secret charm that attracted girls like Elaine.
Consider me an accidental archeologist of urban blight. No academic journal will record my find. But the thrill of discovery is reward enough.
