Yearly Archives 2014

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

Wam!

With that unambiguous, declarative broadside right between the eyes and ears of his readers, Albert Camus opens his brief, haunting and still relevant The Myth of Sisyphus, a 1955 essay that explored the implications of his opening line for modern humanity.

It’s a bracing statement, as if from Moses on the mountain, a bold proclamation designed to grab readers’ attention with its sense of no-B.S. certitude.

I remember how deep I sounded to myself when I parroted the line to anyone who would listen when I first came across it some 40 years ago.

“Whoa, so that’s it? If I want to be serious about my life, I have to consider whether the best and most logical and philosophically consistent thing to do is just go ahead and kill myself? Well, I was thinking of going to graduate school or the Peace Corps or trying to get a se...

Familiarity breeds contempt, goes the old saying. What a colossal falsehood.

Familiarity is the only thing that will save the planet and its people from terrorism, ethnic cleansing, racial wars, religious wars, land disputes, gender hostility, gay phobias, nationalist fevers, and the thousand and one other prejudices and wedges that have for so long served to divide humans as if they were different species doomed to devour each other as part of the natural way of things.

Crossing borders of all kinds—whether geographic, cultural, racial, religious or whathaveyou—is always and everywhere the precursor to understanding, acceptance, and appreciation of others, not merely in their otherness, but in the far more vast expanse of commonality we share as humans.

Familiarity also corrodes ignorance, breaks it down, renders it stupid and passé...

Here in drought-stricken California, we’re being told to let our lawns die. The farmers and the fish need the water, it’s a precious resource, we’ve got to face reality, etc.

After a bone-dry December and January, I was acquiescing, though my lawns, front and back (quite modest-sized, I assure you!) were hunkered down in their winter dormancy and thus not showing any grievous withering face, no brittling yellows that would invite battalions of ever-hearty crab grass and dandelions to mass in preparation for their ultimate invasion and triumph.

Then in February, which effectively brings spring to this Mediterranean climate and would thus reveal the doleful demise of my lawns, the distant sound of cavalry grew suddenly prominent in the form of some nice drenching storms. Not enough to be drought-busters, the newspapers and TV news incessantly reminded us (subtext: “Don’t even think about watering y...

I don’t know when the term “singer-songwriter” came into vogue, but it’s difficult to think of anyone who defined the very essence of that term as cleanly and clearly as Jesse Winchester, he of the impeccably rendered lyrics, near perfect diction, lovely simple melodies and sincere, affectless stage presence.

Winchester died on April 11, just about a year after I gravitated to his music for my shortest ever blog post in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. At the time, his soothing and tender balladry seemed just the prescription for a tormented national psyche.

Winchester engendered a deeply devoted following over his nearly 45-year recording career. That career took a distinctive turn very early on when he opted to go to Canada in 1967 rather than respond to a draft call that might have seen him pressed into service in Vietnam, a war he considered morally repugnant...

Sometimes I think life effectively ends the morning you wake up and you’re no longer able to look forward to something. It can be just about anything: your cup of coffee, the gaze to your garden in the first rays of the sun, a favorite show or sports event on television, the opening of a newspaper or log-on to email, the dive back into the book you fell asleep with the night before, the walk with the dog or meetup with a friend or family member at lunch.

Anticipation is everything, it seems—the pull forward to something that awaits, the zest and expectancy with which we tell ourselves in the quiet of our heart: “Oh, this will be good!” (To which we often append the colloquial expression we kindly share with those whose presence we anticipate: “Can’t wait!”)

Yet anticipation carries within it the seed of its own problem: Will the reality measure up? Will the actual conversation or lunch or bal...