Reminder: Neil Postman Book Club Tomorrow

Here's the Zoom Link

Greetings all:

There was no writing last week, not because there were no words, but because what words I had were stifled by awe. For the last week was filled with a family trip to the Grand Canyon, followed by a funeral for a friend.

I was in the middle of our second day at one of the most awe-inspiring sights in North America, when I got a call from my mother telling me that one of my oldest friends—a true kindred spirit—had died far too early, far too tragically, and with far too much life left.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to drive to Tyler, Texas to say farewell in a packed out church. All I could think of was how mad I was that he wasn’t there to take in the myriad faces that were there to honor him.

He had these crosses made for all the guys in his wedding, of which I was one. The text messages that flowed after his death reminded me of this, which had ridden around buried in my desk drawer for nearly 15 years, nearly forgotten but now reclaimed.

I say all this to say: this is why I wasn’t writing last week. Between the awe of the Grand Canyon and of my friend’s death, awe was all there was, and when you’re beholding something so fragile and overwhelming, words come up short. Robert, I’m sorry. You were one of the people I most looked forward to catching up with, and all we have now is quiet.

The time before the last time I saw him, at a Denver conference.

Zoom Club Info

Monday night—yes, Memorial Day night—is the first installment of the Amusing Ourselves To Death reading group. Revisiting it on a week dedicated to being awed by rocks and vast expanses of space only highlighted how short our lives are, and how many dumb things we devote our salivating minds to. Postman, I think, is a kind of therapy, an opening salvo, to reclaiming a better mind, a less encumbered mental ecosystem. In the end, I’m hopeful that it leads us to not just shucking off infotainment, but to opening up the possibility of being attentive to the world around us: to awe, but also to suffering.

Here’s the Zoom Link. Hope you’ll join us: