Diana and I started talking about having children about a year and a half ago, and I knew we had moved from the realm of dreamy ponderance and into the area of serious business when the conversation about names came up. Names are secret things, full of power. When you start thinking about a future …
As for the connection between quitting my job and New York City, I think it is buried somewhere within the recesses of situational relevance – right here and now, in the fluid present, I’m in this situation and unhappy with it. In the past and future (if they can be separated as such) I’m in New York City and I’m happy. What’s happening here is making me think of what’s happening there, right here and now.
I have discovered an odd truth about violent risk in the United States, particularly the South and West. In the course of my work as a risk analyst and a political scientist studying terrorism, I read a lot of news stories every day about suspicious packages, hazmat responses to weird mail, and pipe bombs. The …
She asked me if I
drank scotch and sat behind a
big desk and wrote about politics and stuff
So I’ve taken up golf lately. Maybe I’m shaking off my inborn liberal guilt, but I’ve really been enjoying myself, despite all the injuries and searing torso pain.
(Written in early 2005; this was the only column I ever wrote for my college newspaper.) We, as a species, have a habit of expecting that the worst thing possible is exactly what will happen, if for no other reason than it so seldom does. This preparation in the mind – to expect abject terror, …