journal features

living easy

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2011.07.10

We attempted to do as little as possible today. Of course we both wound up working until midnight.

Mari's taking Kenny back to Japan for a three week visit starting tomorrow. I spent much of the day with the boy while Mari ran errands and packed. Then we both set to a list of things that we had to do after Kenny was asleep. In my case this meant printing and organizing a copy of our application for Mari's permanent residence visa, and making some video DVD's for Kenny to watch while he's on the plane. Exhausting, in a way.

I'll miss them terribly.

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)