Beyond Classification Archive |
Mother’s Day, 2014 - Mother’s Day. Two fraught words. Loved ones, aging, not who they were. Loved ones, gone, the pain of that going nowhere. Or, as a friend once described her relationship with
Mother’s Day, 2015 - When your mother is 98, what do you give her for Mother’s Day? Anything she wants. Well, not the red Tesla with self-driving technology. Until my mother was in her 80s, I had
Mother’s Day, 2016 - My mother is 99. We’ve been doing this Mother’s Day dance for so long we're pretty good at it. The relationship part, anyway. I’m grateful. And she’s grateful. And that
Mother’s Day, 2017 - My mother is 100. For her epic birthday, we gave her the Amazon Echo. Now she has a new best friend: “Alexa,” who’s like a virtual Library of Alexandria.
Mother’s Day, 2018 - My mother is now 101. My Mother's Day gift? I call her every day. Your mother or wife or daughter is not 101. You may want to give her something
Murray Bruce: The Art of Dying - UPDATE: Murray Bruce died on Tortola on February 3, 2019. A quarter of a century ago --- so long ago it seems like the Pleistocene, so clear in memory it seems
My 10 Favorite Videos 2011 - A Christmas Carol: First day downloads topped 1 million. No. Not really, But it felt that way, in the afternoon, to see that the Amazon download was no longer ranked
My Favorite Things - “The best thing that ever happened to me,” men sometimes say, speaking of their wives. The line hits my hot button hard, and my inner Tourette's wants
My Holiday Conundrum: Rolling in the Deep - A newsletter subscriber wrote to tell me that she was on the verge of unsubscribing. She said she came here for cultural recommendations. Instead, she was having to read to read the
October -
Peace Direct: ‘I am building peace’ - The invitation came from one of our smartest friends. His cause was new in America and unknown to us, but the cost was modest, the event would be mercifully brief
Pearl Kornbluth (1917 – 2020): “There’s always something more you can do.” - Almost a decade ago, I told my mother how I’d begin her eulogy: “Does anyone need any wooden hangers?” That was a metaphor. My mother was a collector, not a hoarder.
Rejuvenation: Beauty, Diet, Home, Spirit - Rejuvenation. It’s what we do after long holidays. Because you watched all ten hours of Making A Murderer. Ate. Drank. And now you have resolutions. The gym. A neater home.
Robert Kennedy: The Gross National Product (March 18, 1968) - It’s no one thing, just the drip drip drip of inaccuracies and misrepresentations, the hatred of the poor and the darkly pigmented, the lust to punish people who can’t fight
Robin Williams, 1983: Even Then, You Could See Life Was a Struggle - Robin Williams dead, a suicide on August 11, 2014, at 63? It couldn't be. Oh, but it could --- what he thought was anxiety and depression was undiagnosed Lewy Body
Roger Enrico (1944-2016) - When Al Pacino got his first important theater role, an actor who didn’t get the part asked him how that happened. “Just lucky,” Pacino said. But that wasn’t the truth. “That actor wanted
Sally Grossman (1939 – 2021): “She was filled with laughter and delight. I could see the love in his face.” - Sally Grossman died recently. She was the widow of legendary music impresario Albert Grossman, but that's not why she got a New York Times obituary --- in 1964, she was
See You In September: What You Might Do On My Summer Vacation - The talking heads and newspaper pundits have been making me crazy. So I asked some brainiacs who aren't in politics or media to write briefly on this topic: "If I were President,
Spring 2007 Book Survival Kit - You think you're just following random interests, and then you look back and see a pattern. I look at the books I've written about over the
Spring 2007 Music Survival Kit - Spring 2007 Music Survival Kit
