As I heard its lyrics the other night while making dinner, I realized that “Oh Very Young” is one of those songs that has left a permanent imprint on me.
It is the kind of song that intertwines with a specific memory or a specific life juncture: when your feelings of happiness, sadness, or confusion collide with music, and your sense of life's fleeting nature becomes acute.
I was introduced to Cat Stevens by a girl I had an intense, but brief friendship with in high school back in Iowa in the 1980s. Her name was Sue, and she was Canadian. She moved to the United States when her parents got divorced and her dad's publishing company transferred him from Toronto to Des Moines.
At 17, having lived my whole life in one state, I no longer felt like I was just watching paint dry. I felt like I was the drying paint.
In this final stretch of the reality show that has been the “election” of the next U.S. president, it is hard to conjure any of the emotional responses that usually spur voters to cast their ballots. Whatever one's predominant feeling in this election cycle - whether anger or revulsion...
The other day, as I was pulling into the parking lot of my local post office, I experienced momentary amnesia, I think, due to a new condition I am going to call violence numbness, or VN for short. It registered to me that the U.S. flag was at half-mast...
It was thought provoking to learn from a recent Associated Press report that a “state task force with representatives from the meat processing industry is looking for ways to expand capacity for meat processing in Vermont.” As more and more evidence confirms the environmental effects of meat production as well as the health effects of meat consumption, it seems that Vermont - which seeks to lead the nation by improving public health and by being proactive on climate change -