While "simultaneously" working on a follow-up to last month’s article on No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life by Heather Menzies and on a third article for my series on Oakland Cemetery this afternoon, I looked down at the little clock at the bottom of my screen and realized I had spent nearly an hour on a single pair of sentences. It was not that I was stuck, not at all, I was just trying to be very precise about my own reaction to part of Menzies discussion, and kept spinning ’round and ’round over the right way to say this:

It’s the economic benefits of capitalism that make it possible for a debate about the social and cultural effects of capitalism to even take place. Debate is an economic luxury, as, quite frankly, is any activity you engage in that’s more consequential than foraging for food or seeking shelter from a storm.

It’s probably more precise to say that "intellectuals are an economic luxury" — but that sounded crass to be so I de-personalized it by referring to debates rather than debaters. Maybe the quote above will whet your appetite for more, or maybe you’ll just find it annoying … but you’ll have to wait to see how it makes it into my articles about time, stress, and modern life … because I decided after running a few errands that the afternoon was better spent watching this:

What a truly incredible story, and what a wonderful piece of film-making. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, and was going to return it tonight but decided to hang on to it a little longer so I could watch it again. I know it was originally popular several years ago, but I’d never seen it and, well, it’s never been that important to me to jump on something because it’s popular. But I loved it, I must say — and if you have it but haven’t watched the extra feature called "Of Penguins and Men" that documents how the film was made, you need to watch that too. It’s as good as the feature film itself.

That’s all for now, except for this link to a Google search that turns up some interesting thoughts on the title of this post:

Writing is hard!

And yet that’s part of it’s charm, don’t you think??????

Happy reading!