Six o’clock in the morning.
It is a morning kind of like yesterday morning, with the difference that today is my birthday. It’s raining out in the jet blackness. I don’t remember when my appointment with Rebecca is, but it’s supposed to be this morning. It interests me how individual behavior gets channeled according with social pressures, even if you are self aware. You can only fight the trends for so long, then you surrender and say okay, whatever. Or perhaps I’m wrong about that. If the world told me that I couldn’t write human interest stuff anymore, then I would probably rebel. We seem to be getting farther away from humanity and closer to money and machinery: anything quantitative over qualitative, and I feel there’s something unnatural about that. Is it an American thing? Now more than ever we need to be humanized and made to feel like unique individuals. I hate to see the demise of philosophy and everything that makes life worth living, because when there’s nothing to live for, existence has no meaning, and the universe might as well vanish away.
I was just looking at the A— News headlines, and trashed the email before I could get halfway through it. Funny, a song by Ralphe Armstrong of Mahavishnu Orchestra comes to mind: “Planetary Citizen.” And I’m thinking that there are multiple ways a person can be a member of society. Sometimes it’s a fight to carve yourself a niche, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. Which reminds me of the poem “Root Cellar” by Theodore Roethke, where life is shown to be irrepressible (“Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath”).
robgradens 
Happy Birthday Rob.
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Thank you, Philip. Have a great day yourself.
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Happy birthday, Rob!
What you describe in your first paragraph is what finally pushed me to leave higher education administration. It’s not about meaningful teaching and learning anymore.
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Thanks Liz!
I guess the key word is “meaningful,” as you say. People are forgetting what it is to be human. Even our music is synthetic, computerized and soulless. Nothing is the same anymore. I’ll keep kicking against it, however.
Have a nice day, and thanks for all your support for the past three years. I remember when you first started following me, in January 2019. Time flies, doesn’t it?
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Funny you mention music. I was listening to the radio in the car on the way to do a couple of errands this morning–and I was struck by how bad all the music was. And for some reason, there seems to be this weird fad of really annoying vocal affectations. What’s up with young men affecting a little breathy baby voice? It’s creepy.
You’re welcome, Rob. A lot of water under the bridge since January 2019. And the river of time rushes on.
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