Maybe I didn’t like all the details, but I liked the overall spirit, and the ending, of this speech.
Month: June 2013
imagine that
According to an article in the Washington Post Pope Francis met with school children on Friday and chose to take their spontaneous questions instead of giving his prepared speech. The kids asked him normal kid-questions, like if he had wanted to become Pope. (Apparently he hadn’t.)
One comment towards the end of the article caught my attention:
A teacher from Spain asked the pope about “compromised” politicians. (Francis said all Christians had an obligation to be involved in politics.)”
All Christians have an obligation to be involved in politics. That means everyone has an obligation to be involved in politics. Radical stuff.
bill cunningham new york
Must-see movie. Netflix streaming. A 99 on the Tomatometer!
putting the f in flyaways
One of my friends sent this pic of me yesterday. It’s almost 30 years old and he snapped it with his ipad out of a photo album. I don’t know where it was taken; it could be Stockholm, or Göteborg, or Brighton on the south coast of England. Maybe it’s Göteborg, in the fall of 1985. We shared an apartment for six months and spent a lot of time together. Plus it’s windy, and Göteborg is always windy.
I don’t remember those shades, but I can see I’m wearing something black, with shoulder pads. (It’s the 1980s, after all.) Whatever I’m wearing it’s likely I made it myself out of army surplus linen, dyed black. I remember the earrings. Geometrical, plastic, black.
Apart from the shoulder pads I see my own students. Big shades, long hair, fresh face.
huge, huh?
When I was a kid, and saw American college campuses on TV, I thought it was the coolest thing. Sunshine-y, casual, and political. I badly wanted to be there. Now I’m not sure how much of that image remains. It is sunny in California, tho, and there sure are flashes of burning political questions in and outside of class.
not even joking
A friend of mine in Sweden said that at the end of the school year, if she saw a person in their early 20s anywhere (in the supermarket, in the street) she’d turn around and walk in the other direction. Not every 20-year-old was a student of hers, of course, but she felt as if every 20-year-old wanted something from her. And she had had enough.
I feel the same way right now. I’m not so sensitive to age, tho. And I can deal with people in short spells. But beyond that, 20 years old or 60, I will have had enough of you pretty fast.
(You know I’m joking, I love people!)