journal features

on the beach

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.02.12

We went to the shore today. I'd call it a beach but the beach was buried under one or two meters of ice.

There's a broad park that follows the water here in the neighbourhood called "The Beaches". Today we saw plenty of people walking dogs (and what large dogs, compared to Tokyo!) and several were on cross-country skis.

Kenny liked horsing about in the snow and on the ice with his snow-pants, boots, and various other layers of winter-proof stuff. Mari enjoyed the blowing snow and the fascinating new combinations of low-angle sun, scudding clouds, and whirling snow. She'll get over that, I expect, but who knows–I spent five years in Japan in a state of wonder.

After that we came back home and coffee and it was good.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)