Is there anything more forlorn than a long unused passport, still brimming with hope of adventure for its bearer, though its pages remain unstamped, the whole of it the very epitome of unrealized potential and unfulfilled dreams? So it was for my passport, it having sat idly in a dark closet throughout the nearly seven years since I last renewed it. Mocking, no, make that pleading with me regarding its mint condition, it was languishing in danger of expiration without ever having come under the squinty gaze and worn thumb of an inquiring border agent asking about my intentions in…
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The photo above is of my father, standing before Mount Suribachi during World War II. If you don’t recognize the name of this mountain, then you may not fully grasp the weight of history—or the immense cost of freedom. Take note: there is no flag on the peak, yet. James Thill enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 20 when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He became one of the youngest first sergeants of his time before eventually retiring as a major in 1965. He never spoke to me about the horrors he endured. Later, I…
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My grandson is a water hound, and that fact plus his third birthday put us last weekend at one of those modern waterparks owned by a conglomerate on the New York Stock Exchange that features hair-raising water slides, wave pools, massive downpouring fountains and godawful unhealthy food at exorbitant prices. It’s a decidedly middle America, working class, family entertainment vibe, which today means plentiful diversity not only of ethnic groups but also body types and aesthetic sensibilities. Suffice to say no one would mistake it for the starting line at the Ironman Triathlon. Why is it, then, that the more…
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Was chatting with a coder friend recently about artificial intelligence (AI) and the persistent buzz that it will be replacing countless jobs in the future. Increasingly, those jobs will include the so-called “knowledge” jobs at which I made my living. College education in the humanities, learning how to read, research, think, evaluate and write? Bahhhhahaha! Better at this point to pick up a useful skill such as Certified Robot Assistant in an Amazon warehouse, where your main concern is troubleshooting any complications the robots encounter finding the items Jeff Bezos has promised his customers they’ll receive in a few nanoseconds.…
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There comes a time when every living thing begins to creak and leak. I include among those “living things” this very blog, which I—with considerable help from a few esteemed cohorts—breathed into being a bit more than 12 years ago, with a post on the novelist, essayist, and public intellectual Marilynne Robinson. A couple of years ago, the WordPress platform this blog uses informed me that its “theme,” the graphic design interface it sits on to convey the words and images here, would no longer be technically “supported.” That meant I would have to transition to a new theme, since…