Now let’s regard Roger Ebert this afternoon. What his passing yesterday, Thursday the 4th of April 2013, can mean. Like any death that strikes your radar, knocking it off the table, you feel a need to inventory yourself. Most of what I could say I chiseled nearly two years ago, when I presented him, by …
Category Archives: Life Lessons
Well Meaning Writers a Target
The essay by Angie Albright, “Blogging IS Real Writing,” posted Nov. 28, 2012, at Arkansas Women Bloggers, impressed me and, judging from social media reactions, many of my fellow scribes. It follows exactly from the title, an apologia for the form. I agree, blogging is writing, but skip the defensive “real.” Of course she’s being …
Fare Thee Well Address
This column first was published as the “President’s Message” in the May 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Dear Larry, [NSNC Vice President Laurence D. Cohen is on the slate of nominees for the May 6 election, for 2012–14 president.] This, the columnists presidency, has been a humbling experience. I’ve had plenty …
My Friend Jeff Zaslow
When you’re middle-aged, what the hell is a friend, anyway? Some of my favorite people I see for one long weekend every year, a conference. In between there will be a handful of emails and, these days, rather more frequently, single-sentence repartee on Facebook. I often have met their spouses, briefly, but damn if I …
Havel and Me
Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock I met Vaclav Havel once, while he was president of Czechoslovakia. We were in a castle. Oh, and I avoided shaking hands with him. Now, he’s dead. Not that I’d ever had a chance to renew the, uh, acquaintance. In September 1992, I was in Europe for a traveling journalism seminar, …
North East West South
Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock When teaching (it’s been awhile) or just yakking, I find greater utility in broad definitions. News, for example, “is whatever is new, whatever is different.” Meaning front-page, top-of-the-hour news. That’s where are found recountings of heroism, and more often tragedy. Print and broadcast are front-loaded mainly with bad news, which …
Duality in the Sun
Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock The occasional, amateur anthropologist in me has been studying the spouse for 19 1/2 years. Occasional discoveries have been made during the field work, but a revelation has occupied the study recently: There’s two of her. I’m pretty sure of this because there’s two of me. My Beloved has the usual …
It Takes Villages
Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock Something that’s amazed me my entire adult life is how lousy a predictor childhood is of adult success. Children reared with all the advantages, the latest psychology and/or consistent discipline — turn out as anything from national leaders to routinely stable mid-levels to layabouts. Children born in abusive families or …
Heeeeere’s Bedtime
The most useless habits can be the hardest to break. The three most annoying routines have dwindled to one. None of them ever was harmful. For me, it was a curiosity, why keep on, no pleasure, not even any risk. The first silly habit I knocked off as an adult was to forego the comic strip …
Begetting Books
It’s been some three decades since I last watched them do it, and I can’t quite replicate it. I wish I could multitask like my parents, who excelled at the feat before it had a name. There’s one round of activities of theirs that I envy. They could read mysteries and novels (Mom) or thrillers and …