“What can you do?” Often said under a deep sigh, it’s something I’ve heard even more often than “What happened?” recently. People venting their anger have become a staple on the evening nooze, but resigned apathy remains a much more common emotion in response to the Depression. It’s the economic Depression made into a personal depression, matching the lack of income with a sense of helplessness. It’s understandable, yes, but countering it is the most important task we have ahead of us.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Football
Football is the most intellectual of all the major sports in the USofA. Go ahead, laugh, but it’s true. All those breaks between plays are more than time for wagging commentary and the occasional Bud commercial, they are a chance for the coach to send in a play that one side will attempt to execute while the other tries to foil it. Raw athletic ability is often thwarted by a clever plan or a quick wit that sees past it. Amid the changing fronts of trench warfare that make the game, a good General is what it takes to win.
Maintenance
The brush moves back and forth as if under its own power after a while. Painting is a kind of hypnotic therapy driven by nothing more stimulating the porch rail becoming a little bit brighter. The Canadian Pacific grey soot slowly becomes white and shiny, new and clean. Years of weather are buried by another layer of acrylic polymer, ready to start again. It may not be sexy, fun, or even worth writing an essay about, but basic maintenance such as painting the porch every few years is absolutely required if you want to have a nice porch to enjoy the rest of the time.
Digital Paperboy
How much would you pay to read your favorite newspaper online? If the answer is nothing, because that’s what you’re paying now, you’re not alone. But 170 dailies are agonizing over how to make you pay for their craft in a semi-public way that we are just beginning to learn about. The company that wants to make this happen is Journalism Online, and they’re serious.
At Yer Feet
When people talk about the economy, whether on talk shows or in bars or just standing at the bus stop, the conversation eventually goes the same way. Everyone has a theory about who is to blame, where the money went, or at least how this might play out in the distorted politics of our time. If you let the conversation play out a bit, however, there’s one thing that always seems to turn people’s gaze to the floor as if the answer is written at our feet – what the Hell really happened?
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 