I found myself almost wanting to say “my friend Sylvia Beach,” because having read her memoir “Shakespeare & Co,” and having read how good she was to Papa (before he was Papa) and so many writers, I have become very fond of her.
http://www.thehemingwayproject.com/in-praise-of-sylvia-beach/
MICHAEL VENTURA –
LETTERS AT 3AM
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE PRINTED
Austin Chronicle – Feb. 8, 2013
That headline has been digitally duplicated (plagiarized) from David Bjerklie’s essay in Time’s special edition: “100 New Scientific Discoveries.” Bjerklie’s headline says it all.
Three-dimensional manufacturing is the making of something out of practically nothing. This technology accelerates as we speak. Bjerklie reports that there is only one retail outlet that sells 3-D printers, MakerBot in New York City. Only one, but it sold 15,000 3-D printers by late 2012.
Continue reading Ventura: This really does change everything
[Someday I will have to get around to writing my essay on Thoreau as the world’s first post-industrial man. He foresaw so much, generations ahead of time. He died in 1862! Yet not only would he understand the subject of Ventura’s current column, he alluded to it in Walden and other places, long before it manifested.]
MICHAEL VENTURA
LETTERS AT 3AM –
WHAT ARE HUMAN BEINGS FOR?
Austin Chronicle – Jan. 25, 2013
Terry Gou is chairman of Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturer of iPhones. Foxconn employs more than a million people worldwide. Gou says, “As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.” Gou plans to avoid headaches by replacing his employees with more than one million robots (The New York Times online, Aug. 12, 2012).
I keep thinking about all the certainties I read about; all the people who know
I lose patience. My thoughts go roughly like this.
Friends, this introductory fragment from a book I long intended to write but perhaps will never get to do, for your edification.
Thoreau and Mr. Emerson: A friendship
Friendship, like marriage or any other relationship, offers plenty of room for misunderstanding and irritation. Your best friend isn’t necessarily the person you would choose to deliver your eulogy. That doesn’t make the friendship any less precious.
It was like that for Emerson and Thoreau. Their friendship had plenty of obstacles, not least the personalities of the two. Over the years, each man’s journal from time to time reproaches the other for his insufficiencies, or finds the other wrong-headed.
The following write-up was written shortly after the experience happened to me, about eight years ago, if memory serves. Came across it and thought, still relevant.
Friends,
Over the weekend, a reminder of how we are angels to each other. Continue reading Angels to each other
Okay the election ended before the Mayan calendar did, though not by much. I have just a word for any political partisans who might read this.
The election is over, and your man won, or lost. Your party won, or lost. Your ideology won, or lost.
None of that is nearly as important was whether you won or lost.
And how could you judge that? Simple enough. Compare yourself to four years ago.
Are you more fearful than you were?
Are you closer to a state of chronic political hatred?
Are you less able to give the benefit of the doubt to opinions that oppose yours?
Some years ago, now, during the reign of King George the Unelected, one day I realized with a shock that I was moving close to a state of chronic anger. I realized that only hatred lay in that direction, and hatred is delayed self-destruction.
Sound familiar?
The good news is that the condition is curable. It can be reversed by a decision, an act of will. We can choose not to live in a state of fear, and anger, and self-righteousness. But we do have to choose.
Isn’t the aftermath of an election as good a time as any to make that choice?