Year: 2012
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On our obsession with careers and career changes: A reconsideration
Bafflement I’ve been observing that the term “second career” is gaining in popularity and I’ve been baffled by this. Only yesterday, someone considering becoming a yoga instructor pointed me to an article she’d read on why yoga may be a good “second career.” To confirm the upward tick in usage, I entered the term into Google…
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On technology’s noises and nature’s silence
At a pitstop en route to returning our rental car on Saturday, my love and I remarked that the automatic toilet flushers flushed before we were through. My manual flusher was also disconnected. I was thinking of these, perhaps, when I tried to get my weekend duffle–no large thing–into the plane’s overhead compartment and had…
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‘When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you…’
When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you. Marilynne Robinson calls the West “lonesome” and means it to be a virtue. I want so much for life to be quiet and wind-spoken. Thinking sounds–comes and sounds–like this. Like wind speaking. We’ll be in the mountains for almost a…
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‘[F]or a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone…’
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and…
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On ‘urban supremicism’ and the end of opportunity cost
I have been following Greek citizens’ response to the collapse of their economy and their likely exit from the Eurozone. Some, doing the hard work of their forbears, have returned to the land. Others, like Gregoris Skouros (see “As Economics of Everyday Life Erode, Some Greeks See Little Hope” [New York Times, Sept. 19, 2012]),…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 