...more recent posts
Some interesting 9/11 fallout, so to speak. I heard from a Parsons classmate I hadn't been in touch with since back in the day. She spent the anniversary reading accounts on the web, and in the course of searching for old acquaintances found our site by looking up Steve DiBenedetto (as a relatively unusual name). First such contact I've had here. I guess she got something out of it, and she'd had the same memory of Larry Rivers and the pope that I recounted. I suggested that this was the sort of connectivity the internet was supposed to foster, and a positive thing to bring out of the remembrance of an awful event.
Meanwhile, in the Park, I met a woman who said she's only recently begun to really get over the whole thing, and it seems bird-watching is helping her. Trying to be helpful, I proceeded to find a rare Connecticut Warbler, which thrilled her no end.
Sometimes I think I talk it better than I walk it, so it was nice to feel like my insular activities might actually be of some use to others.
Reality TV is finally getting interesting. The point is not individuals and their "realness", but polling, which abstracts them. Polling has transformed politics in the last century, and now Argentina is going to choose a presidential candidate through a TV contest. This may start out as a species of joke, but who knows where it could lead?
(NY Post story in comments)