(This odd little essay is from three-and-a-half years ago.)
It's back to the present tense today after a week where my recollections of the early days of the pandemic suddenly took over my writing impulse completely. Maybe the seemingly sudden end of the Covid crisis led to my obsession with how it all began.
In both fiction and nonfiction, you often discover you can't really begin a story properly until you know how it ends. That's why so many murder mysteries start with the body of the victim. Knowing how the story ends makes everything leading up to that conclusion an extended state of anticipation, of dread and thus a quest for some logic and meaning for it all.
For everyone's sake, you want things to make sense, don’t you? That's what I'm trying to do with the pandemic and also with my life story.
It feels like I've been asleep for the past 15 months or so, but now I'm awake, I'm wondering whether things really happened as I remember or whether it was all just a dream.
***
Friday started out with my daughter Julia's graduation from Goucher College in Maryland. The president of the college in his commencement remarks cited Bureau of Labor Statistics data predicting that the class of '21 will have an average of 11 different jobs during their careers. Starting now.
Also at the ceremony, the mayor of Baltimore noted that the graduates are entering a world where racism, poverty, gun violence, and other severe problems await new leaders to propose new solutions.
Indeed. And we need to be hopeful for their sake and ours as we welcome the next generation of 22-year-olds to the struggle to make our only partially democratic society much more equitable, peaceful and inclusive.
Their work is cut out for them. That is a cliche and it is true. At least eleven jobs each -- that's what it will take to reach retirement, the experts believe. Personally, I hope Julia can retire a half-century from now knowing she did her best to make this a better world to the best of her ability.
But for now she stands where I did in May 1969. Did I do everything I could have done to make the world a better place?
Not by any measure. Like most people, my most idealistic self struggled over and over with my pragmatic self, and sometimes pragmatism won out. I can rationalize that as well as the next guy, but the universal battle seems to be how to balance self-realization with loftier work on behalf of everybody else.
(Painting by Daisy Comolli, aged 10)
HEADLINES:
Helene lashes the South with wind and sheets of rain. Millions are without power (AP)
Vice President Harris leads Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania polls (The Hill)
Nebraska’s ‘blue dot’ district suddenly at the center of election (WP)
Republicans’ Electoral College Edge, Once Seen as Ironclad, Looks to Be Fading (NYT)
Democrats hope to win a House majority on Harris’s California coattails (WP)
The Most Obvious Scandal in New York City’s History (New Yorker)
Battleground House Dems in New York call for Eric Adams’ resignation (Politico)
Foreign leaders seek meetings with Trump as knife-edge election nears (WP)
Hezbollah Targets Tel Aviv as Israel Moves Forces Toward Lebanon (NYT)
Netanyahu distances himself from U.S.-led proposal for ceasefire in Lebanon (Axios)
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz rejected proposals for a ceasefire with Hezbollah after the United States and France called for a 21-day halt in fighting that has killed hundreds in Lebanon and raised fears of a ground invasion. (Reuters)
Trump says Ukraine is ‘demolished’ and dismisses its defense against Russia’s invasion (AP)
A prolific documentary filmmaker is out with a new account of the Jan. 6 insurrection ― and he has a stark warning about this November. [HuffPost]
GDP: US economy grows at 3% annualized pace in second quarter (Yahoo)
Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake (Atlantic)
Google says a closed ad ecosystem isn’t anticompetitive — it’s just safer (Verge)
At-Will Employment Must End. Our Civil Rights Depend on It. (The Nation)
Maggie Smith, beloved ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Harry Potter’ star, dead at 89 (CNN)
Behind OpenAI’s Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity (NYT)
OpenAI hit by staff exits as it seeks to restructure and raise new funds (WP)
That Message From Your Doctor? It May Have Been Drafted by A.I. (NYT)
Climatologists Say Humanity’s Best Hope Is Hurricanes Spinning In Different Directions And Canceling Each Other Out (The Onion)
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