Tag Archives: technology

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program to Talk About Usernames and Passwords and Thanksgiving

I’m on the studio computer a couple of days before Thanksgiving while my wife is entertaining a friend upstairs in the living room, and in an effort to be courteous but wanting still to make progress on the music listening/writing project, I decide to listen to music in the basement and record my experience inContinue reading “We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program to Talk About Usernames and Passwords and Thanksgiving”

On the Nineteenth Day of 2025…

…I find that TikTok has already been restored, and I say, WTF. What kind of a bullshit ban was that? I looked at it last night around 9 or 10 p.m. and it was dark; this morning by noon it was alive and kicking. And I say, WTF again. I have tried not to consumeContinue reading “On the Nineteenth Day of 2025…”

On the Seventh Day of 2025. . .

I would like to say that I rested. I cannot say that. I can say, however, that I spent 20 minutes on the meditation cushion and had some difficulty quieting the mind. I just wanted to think about stuff. That’s the real difficulty, isn’t it, because it’s one thing to sit on a cushion withContinue reading “On the Seventh Day of 2025. . .”

Writing in a Zoom Room with Friends

If there is anything I miss about teaching during the pandemic school shutdown, it’s sitting virtually with a group of human beings I care about, in absolute silence, and in the comfort of my home, while every student in the Zoom Room writes. A silent classroom, no doubt, is better, because not only could youContinue reading “Writing in a Zoom Room with Friends”

#453: If I can go one-hundred days without . . .

Fifteen If I can go one-hundred days withoutAlcohol, do you think I might be ableTo go a week without social media,Or the internet for that same matter?All that digital stuff has becomeLike the cordyceps in The Last Of Us,So inextricably intertwined in our livesSo as to make extrication seem nighImpossible. Maybe not even nigh. Again, likeContinue reading “#453: If I can go one-hundred days without . . .”

Life Envy: The FOMO

  I want to be living that life. By myself, late at night, sitting in the dark of the back yard with my phone, the dog, and a drink, I actually heard myself say this out loud: I want to be living that life. It’s crazy, I know, but looking sometimes at pictures of peopleContinue reading “Life Envy: The FOMO”

Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year, Redux: Kids These Days, Part the Third–On Being and Unbeing

I’ve been writing lately about student behavior. In one blog I commiserated with my elementary school colleagues about young children who cause violent disruptions and I bemoaned the high school apathy I saw at my own school, and in another blog I wrote about surprising teenage shenanigans, you know, like bringing communion wafers to class.Continue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year, Redux: Kids These Days, Part the Third–On Being and Unbeing”

#236: Media Fast, Anyone?

I cannot help it. I can’t look away. It’s a train wreck, a complete cluster, and every morning begins with the same question: What’s the outrage of the day? And now that I’m on a holiday break I’ve got something like free time to keep checking in on the downfall of my civilization. I thinkContinue reading “#236: Media Fast, Anyone?”

#149: Unspeakable

Unspeakable I’m trying to find words to describe how I feel when, during a reading from Elie Wiesel’s Night, I look up and see students looking at their phones. One student, in particular, looks at me, and without irony, without hesitation, and without, I would say, consciousness, says, as if it were a legitimate explanation, that sheContinue reading “#149: Unspeakable”