Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
Sometimes, no matter what you do, people just get on your nerves. Wouldn’t it be nice to get away from everybody and move to a house in the woods, where you’d have peace and quiet? This isn’t a farfetched idea. Henry David Thoreau did it. Grizzly Adams did it. In fact, thousands of people have done it in recent years. … >>
Suppose you wanted to send a message to someone living thousands of years in the future. How would you do it? We can forget about trying to express it in electronic form. Personal computers have been around for only 30 years, but already quite a number of file formats have become obsolete — and replaced by others that are much … >>
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, in The Life of Reason (1905) Seven years to the day after America’s worst natural disaster, history almost repeated itself. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina had crossed Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, hitting New Orleans and devastating large parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Last … >>
New Mexico is on fire. Again. It seems like only last year that we heard reports about… Wait. It was just last year. The difference is that back then, most of the fire was across the state border in Arizona, and it was called the largest fire in Arizona history. This year, it’s mostly in New Mexico, and it’s considered … >>
The cold, wet weather that lasted into the early part of August didn’t provide much of an incentive to go outdoors. Fortunately, however, this year has offered some very interesting reality TV. In January and February I found myself watching what I call the Egypt show, a touching soap opera that was on every night. That series ended with a … >>
Three times in one week, the world almost ended. Joplin, Missouri was wiped out by a tornado on Sunday. Our sympathies go to the residents, some of whom are known to our staff. In California, an 89-year-old Bible enthusiast had predicted the Rapture for the day before. Afterwards, he said he was “flabbergasted” that this didn’t happen. He’s now rescheduled … >>
Dear readers, I hope you can forgive me for abandoning two of my principles. The first is not to revisit a topic too soon after having written about it. I thought I was done with tornadoes, but they kept coming. After those in North Carolina, there was the one that destroyed the airport in St. Louis, Missouri. Then a major … >>
When my uncle moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, he no longer had to shovel his driveway. Instead, he almost got hit by a tornado. “One of the first tornadoes touched down just nine miles [15 km] north of us,” he wrote in an e-mail this week. One of the first, that is, of 25 tornadoes that hit the state … >>
This column was originally written for Spotlight Online. There’s a tradition at Spotlight Online: every afternoon, we take a short break and have a cup of tea with colleagues from our youth magazine, Spot on. We discuss our various travels and the news of the day, and exchange ideas that we can share with you, our readers. When the tragedy … >>
Women with abusive husbands make all sorts of excuses for them: “He’s normally not like that.” “He’s sorry.” “He’s trying to change.” “He provides for me.” “I don’t have to worry about things.” “I’d never survive without him.” “There’s no alternative.” (Men can experience this, too, as the target of emotional abuse. The scars are on the inside.) We can’t … >>