The running app on my phone is a record of my decline.

      I’ve had the app for the last decade or so, and every time I press that little button on the bevel of my watch that is synced with the app, it records every run I’ve taken. The app tells me not just the distance and duration of my run but the route I’ve covered, the miles per minute, how many calories expended, what pace, what my mile splits were, how this particular run ranked with all the others and probably a lot of other things, too.

      It not only has a record of every one of my nearly 1,700 runs since 2013, it also compares this week to last week and this month to last month and this year to last year. And so it tells me how much worse I’m getting. . . .

      The last time I walked across Columbia’s campus as a student, it was 1975. The Vietnam War had only recently ended and Watergate was still fresh in the nation’s memory. I felt alive with possibility and curiosity as to where my career might take me. As I returned this spring for my 50th reunion at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, I was struck by how much—and how little—had changed.

      The campus looked nearly the same. Low Library’s stately dome still presided over College Walk, and the familiar granite buildings seemed untouched by time. But the mood was different. For almost the last year, the university had been at the center of national headlines due to protests over the Gaza war. For many alumni, the spotlight evoked memories of the 1968 protests and other moments when Columbia became a flashpoint for political and moral confrontation. . . .

      A few months ago, six highly respected individuals in the tech world, among them Scott Alexander, published a detailed prediction on the future of artificial intelligence. It is entitled, AI 2027.

      Among the most dramatic of their prognostications is the arrival in 2027 of what they refer to as “an intelligence explosion.”

      That is much sooner than expected—cheery news. The scary news in the AI 2027 report, of course, is that all that intelligence will be gained by computers, and we might not be intelligent enough to make sure it helps humans.

The authors of that report end up presenting two different scenarios for the near future: one ends with a kind of utopia, the other with mass death. . . .

(The above image shows Scott Alexander being interviewed about this report on the Dwarkesh Podcast)

      Pretzel rods are my madeleines.

     Those small, lemon-scented French sponge cakes triggered involuntary recollections for Marcel Proust. Pretzel rods do it for me. They are, as the French novelist would say, vessels of persistent memory.

      They are also really tasty.

      We hadn’t bought them in a long time, until recently. Too salty, I thought, too much sodium. Not good for the diet.

      But then, in the supermarket a couple of weeks ago, I checked the label on a bag of pretzel rods and discovered that the high sodium content referred to the serving size, and the serving size is three pretzels, and consequently if I only ate one at a time, I’d be ok. . . .

      . . . .This went on for the better part of a year until my last day. I guess with all the pump-business we had to cover I had neglected to tell Rudy about my plans. He rolled up, took a long look at my U-Haul trailer, took off his cap, and asked: 

      “Where you goin', Dave?"

      "North Carolina."

      "Whatcha gonna do up there?"

       "Graduate school. I'm going to get a master's degree in special education." 

       "No shit. I got my doctorate in biochemistry." 

       It turned out that Rudy was DOCTOR Rudy Bohac director of the Forensic Lab at the Austin City Police Department. . . .

The Round Rock, by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

      I like to get up early. She likes to lie in bed. I like the overhead fan on medium or high. She hates drafts. I like natural grains and somewhat spicy foods. She can’t tolerate natural grains and somewhat spicy foods.

      I want to be early to every appointment. She cuts it close every time. I have a great sense of direction. She has gotten lost two blocks from our home.

      She cannot tell a lie, not even a small fib. I have been known to massage the truth. She was brought up Catholic. I was brought up Jewish. . . .

Click here for the full drawing

     Trump has the same attitude toward college [admissions] spots that he has toward immigration and imports. To him, everything is just a lump of fixed size — a pie to be divided. In his mind, if you kick out immigrants, the number of jobs doesn’t go down — the jobs just get parceled out to native-born Americans instead. If you ban imports, Americans don’t consume less — they just buy American-made products instead. And if you kick out foreign students, the number of college spots doesn’t go down; American kids just get more.

     Of course, Trump is wrong about that . . . .

(This is an excerpt from Noah Smith’s “NoahOpinion” substack. Click here to read the full article, where he provides evidence to back up these points.)

      Progress toward freedom and equality came at an enormous price in the 1960s for the courageous leaders of the civil rights movement. Some, like Martin Luther King, gave their lives to the struggle. Others endured jail, beatings and threats to carry on the fight.

      On March 7, 1965, Alabama state police pummeled and fractured the skull of John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. Lewis went on to become a highly respected congressman from Georgia. He fought for social justice and civil rights throughout his career, using the term “good trouble” to describe the kind of courageous, nonviolent protest that defined his life and career.

      Today, we are seeing too little “good trouble” from our leaders and, quite honestly, from ourselves as the Trump administration works to obliterate the progress of the civil rights movement and much more. . . .

      . . . The sad experiences have faded. They do not hold a central place in my psyche, but are instead filed deep in the cabinet of my mind under despair, “do not open.” How fortunate am I that the joys of life dance in my memories and the sadnesses are mostly forgotten?

      With what I believe might be the last few years of my life, it’s up to me to figure out what I hope to accomplish with what time is remaining. What are my priorities, goals, dreams, aspirations, focus and must dos?

      At the top of my list is the need to ensure I am never a burden to my family. Beneath that there are the little things: keeping the hummingbirds well-nourished throughout the summer; planting milkweed for the monarch butterflies; keeping the bluebird boxes clean and ready for nesting; piling rich compost on all my shrubs, plants and trees; protecting the family home for future generations; and fighting for a country that resembles the one I love because liberty and justice is the American Way . . . .

This is the second in a series about what we still want to accomplish. Here’s a link to the first. Write to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com about what you still want to do.

      I began sobbing at a concert the other night. In a stadium. In Lille, France.

      I don’t cry easily. A handful of movies maybe. A performance of “Porgy and Bess” some years ago. And it has been, happily, a while since someone close to me died. I certainly had never before cried at a concert.

      It was a Bruce Springsteen concert. . .

      . . .  For I realized, or just felt, that what Bruce wanted to say on this tour, when he sang, “Dreams will not be thwarted … Faith will be rewarded . . . Bells of freedom ringin',” is that maybe the America of our “hopes and dreams,” not the current Republican party’s survival-of-the-richest America (though guess who has now apparently become a billionaire?); the America that reaches out a hand to immigrants and the less fortunate at home and overseas; the America we knew and perhaps insufficiently treasured; maybe that America will somehow survive “the criminal clown” and his “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

     Maybe it will survive, which of course leaves open the possibility that maybe it won’t. . . .

      The headline on the New York Times feature article—“Honey, Sweetie, Dearie: The Perils of Elderspeak”—caught my eye. So that’s what they call it!

      But it was the subhead that really annoyed me: “A new training program teaches aides to stop baby talk and address older people as adults.”

      Wow. What a concept.

      Even though I didn’t know there was a name for it, I remember cringing instinctively when I first encountered instances of it years ago. Long before I too was an “older adult,” I bristled when well-meaning but tone-deaf nurses and aides talked to my elderly, formal/dignified father that way when he was in the hospital. . . .

      Perhaps the greatest fictional immortal being is Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, from the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide series. After being made immortal by “an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands,” Wowbagger eventually soured on life. 

“To begin with it was fun; he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.” …

      This is an excerpt from the Substack of Brian Klass an associate professor of global politics at University College London. An earlier, related excerpt explained why the increase in life expectancy is slowing.

      Billionaires are, pretty deservedly, getting a bad rap these days. They are, rightfully, being accused of torching our government to satisfy their own insatiable greed. They are seen widely, and generally correctly, as predatory grifters using their financial power to steal from all the rest of us.

      And yes, of course, the whole capitalist system is unfair and there shouldn’t be any billionaires at all in a just world, in a fair society.

      But despite overwhelming evidence that they are mostly a bunch of avaricious vultures, I’ve come to say a few good words about a few billionaires—and how it’s best not to focus on the billionaire class too much, too exclusively, as many of us have been doing.

      Because when we repeatedly say we don’t want a government run by billionaires, it’s an easy pejorative. It’s a safe applause line, a hit at demonstrations and protests. But it’s reductive. . . .

      Unless I’m mistaken—and I don’t think I am—I never have done The New York Times crossword puzzle. I do remember decades ago sitting on the D train in the Bronx with one of my high school teachers and watching amazed as she settled into her seat beside me and eagerly started doing the Times crossword—in ballpoint pen.

       It’s not that I don’t like word games; actually I love them. In fact, while vacationing in Maine over the years, members of my family would groan whenever I would say after dinner: “How about we play some Scrabble?”

       But never the Times crossword—until now. . . .

      Earlier this month I was invited to show some of my videos at a Disability Arts Festival hosted by the University of Alabama’s Arts in Medicine program in Birmingham. While there I witnessed a remarkable performance, From Where I Sit, which was the culmination of a three-year cross-country program that began with writers gathering monthly online to journal about their realities of living with spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and transverse myelitis.

      Suzanne Costello tailored their words into a script, and Anita Hollander composed songs. Participating artists flew in from all over the country and worked with Costello to create a show in two weeks of intensive rehearsal in Birmingham. Remarkably, many of them had never performed before. . . .

      . . . .Here’s a link to a video of the live performance.

This is the first in a series. Write to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com about what you still want to accomplish.

. . . .Marathons were things committed fanatics did—a challenge for the much younger, the much fitter, the anorexic. Why would anybody want to torture themselves like that, why would anybody commit to a regimen that would preoccupy them for months, exhaust them for days, torture them for hours?

This I saw my daughter run the New York City Marathon.                

      It was a beautiful day across the boroughs and it seemed like we were engulfed in a citywide party. There were crowds cheering everywhere, runners enveloped in good wishes, smiling through their pain. Despite what must have been the agony—at miles 20 and beyond—we were all transported for a short time to a genial place of possibility.

      At the end of the race my daughter was tired but exhilarated, undamaged but bubbling. I envied her. . . .

     Plenty of studies and news stories lately noting a decline in dating, in relationships, in having sex, in falling in love—among young people, the people who would be most expected to indulge in such behaviors. But the decline has not just been observed among young people. This two-and-a-half minute video is a meditation upon such behaviors—all of which might fall under the heading, “romance”—and their apparent decline, which has been dubbed: “A Romance Recession.”

Click here to view video

. . . So, we all should just continue to go about our business as if this is just another conservative administration and politics as usual. We should let our president—that noted humanitarian; that unrivaled deal maker, who only went bankrupt six times; that economic tinkerer with some 19th-century ideas on tariffs; and that self-proclaimed patriot who demonstrates little understanding of or support for the Constitution—do whatever he feels is best.

       When they said back in the 1930s that “it can’t happen here,” they were right. It didn’t. And maybe those who think Trump and the Republicans would cede power after a loss in the midterms or in 2028 will prove right. However, Donald Trump did encourage an insurrection at the Capitol last time he lost an election.

I am by nature an optimist. But, as I’ve written here, my optimism is rapidly fading.

      It is all no big deal. Until it is.

There is reason to believe we are the frogs, and the water in our pan is about to boil.

      I am definitely running out of time, and I have (mostly) made peace with that.

      When I was a child, one of the most important events of the year was the county fair. My friends and I would go on all the carnival rides and eat all the carnival food. But around 10 p.m., someone would notice the time. We’d have only an hour until our parents arrived. Suddenly we had a new clarity of purpose. We stopped wanting to ride the Gravitron or eat more cotton candy. We wanted to get one more funnel cake and then head for the Ferris wheel. This is what aging feels like. You suddenly realize you’ve got one hour left at the fair, and you get serious about how you are going to live. . . .

This is an excerpt from a column by Anne Lamott, written for the Washington Post.