Once again, I read this aloud to my husband as we sipped our coffee while sitting next to each other to start the day. Our “retired people” routine, the luxury of time. I only read aloud if the point is profound. I relate to your story from the horse squishing incident, although my event was from a saddle horse, not a working beast, to the iVax. The dating couple and their inattention to one another showed me why, exactly, these people should not breed. I am a livestock producer and cannot help myself using our lingo. I have an iPhone 8 which replaced my iPhone 5 a year ago or so, and an IPad so I can have a real time map to assist my poor sense of direction. The talking lady map is no help to a visual processor. It was the iVax section which caused me to back up and read aloud. We had already decided to wait a spell on the boosters as the clown show plays out. I really hate clowns. Many technologies are incredibly useful, but come with such high prices, literally and figuratively. Labeling this one iVax is brilliant and cannot be unseen. You do know you are amazing? Thanks for yet another thought producing message.
I resisted technology for a long time…finally broke down and got an iPhone because my old flip phone could no longer communicate with my brother who lives in Mexico, and my husband teased me that a third world country had more advanced technology than I did!
I did not expect to love it as much as I did, but I am a lover of knowledge and research, and soon became enamored with having a computer in my pocket, and the whole world of information in my hand. I was slow to join social media, having a cynical and suspicious nature, and started to join and post only after censorship became the norm; it was an act of resistance and rebellion, performative in nature perhaps, but I felt the need to do something.
When the covid pandemic began I was initially fearful of the virus, and diligently masked up and disinfected my groceries before bringing them in the house. I was intrigued and hopeful with regards to the vaccines, but also fearful of getting one due to a life-long history of severe allergic reactions to multiple medications, and the lack of long-term testing and research with these new vaccines.
Soon, the narratives began to change, and things we were promised were true were swept away by the corporate media as if they had never been uttered, to be replaced by new truths, which would soon also be replaced, in an endless cycle that never acknowledged any discrepancy with past iterations of “the science”.
And the censorship began in ernest: anyone who diverged from the party line was erased from existence, with no acknowledgement, as if they had never been.
Then those who dared to resist the new mandates to get vaccinated (for whatever reason; no valid justification was allowed) became demonized as “unvaxxed” (i.e. unclean) and blamed for all the ills of the planet.
My cynicism and determination to resist has only grown as I have watched this unfold. We are entering a new age of tyranny, and my new motto is “you cannot comply your way out of tyranny”.
I don’t know where or how this will end. But I will not comply.
This glowing piece, and the vision of a dude wearing a Patagonia hoodie with "Live Simply" emblazoned on the front, his face lit up as he diddles with his iPhone, convinced me it's time to downgrade. But who will read the magnificent stuff you write Walter? People don't read books anymore, during this spooky era as what's erroneously called "civilization" lingers, "moments away from going dark," or what's worse, from morphing into the Zuck's Creepy Metaverse.
Beautiful description of the fraught moment we're in. The ease of digital consumerism is astonishing, and since I'm inherently super-lazy, I need to be more vigilant about it. Damn that Bezos, he really is an evil genius with the whole "one-click" thing.
My Mother’s oldest brother had two teams of Belgian houses. Tom and Mike were one pair and forgot the other two. They had Irish names similar to those of my numerous cousins - many of whom were born after these horses. I lived with them in the summer as a grade school kid with my 4 older cousins. This was rural western Iowa in the 1950’s. About 40 acres of oats and hay were farmed with these teams out of 260. My uncle kept all the old equipment for mowing, bundling (oats), elevating, shelling, etc. Hard work because the oat bundles were shocked by hand to dry in the sun and the hay distributed over rope slings in the wagon by pitch fork in the full heat of summer. It all came back to the barn where the Belgians ate the hay and oats they/we harvested and straw was used to bed their stalls plus the other riding horses and a few milk cows.
They were huge gentle beasts who responded to their names and numerous voice commands. Four foot whitish tails that felt like sandpaper strips when they hit your face. Never got pinned because I was too small then plus my chore was to give them each a gallon of oats in the bunks in the front of their stall plus their hay. My boy cousins were tall enough to curry them. While they could easily damage you without knowing it in a tight stall, I would like to think they would not have done it intentionally.
Yes. Backing away from those haunted screens and their insistent updates. Turning back to the book shelves, the sheet music, the scrapbooks of faded snapshots. Re-learning to write by hand. 33 1/3 rpm. (We took it all for granted.) I want offline to feel actual, online to again be artificial, as it always was.
I loved Walter Kirn's book Mission to America. He's an intelligent, interesting writer. I don't feel the need to share all of his opinions about things; I don't, in fact. About the vaccine, it seems to be helping people not to get very sick, this time around. I have been vaccinated and got the booster. It is not a big issue for me one way or the other. People always said I should get a flu shot but I never did. Didn't see any need to, and wore masks when I had a bad cold, before it became a thing, and told clerks in grocery stores that I was ill and they might want to wash their hands after touching my groceries and handling my credit card. Good ol' mind. It can go anywhere. We train our minds, don't forget that- you train yours, and I train mine. That's why I like Kirn's writing. It's interesting to see where he goes with what he observes. I subscribe to a few other Substacks, and read them when I have time. And being new to this one, I am reading and seeing how I feel about being connected to it. Anyway it's easier than having to listen to hours of Joe Rogan, though not as reliable as Heather Cox Richardson. What am I trying to say here? Nuance is good. Everything is not black or white. Just watched Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Now there is a film that does not try to reduce everything to the good and the bad. We are humans swimming in what we have always swum through. New forms, old problems, new toys, old habits. New skills.
iVax - not sure whether to love you or hate you. Maybe it was just my mistake for trying to drink coffee at the same time as reading.... It’s amazing how far coffee can spray when using laughter propulsion......
Great reflection. The world is now fashioned against the downgrade—I remember the first time I begrudgingly bought a cell phone was in response to the new way social outings were planned: improvisations in the 11th hour. Swimming against such a current will require some real fortitude, and even a measure of new (and maybe delightful) lonesomeness.
Walter, you're such an amazing storyteller. You take these dots and connect them with an emotional valence and build to a payoff, and 9 times of 10 them payoff is some calculated learned stupidity meant to pander to whatever media bubble you've immersed yourself in. You're better than this!
COVID shots aren't iVax de-sexualizing our youth any more than the flu shot is. Kids are living in a different environment now, but the changes are more with the observer than the observed. You and your entire generation have desexualized because you've gotten older and that's what happens. The world isn't ending, but the end is always on the horizon for any given individual, and the older you get the closer than seems.
Use your powers to teach and inform and share wisdom. Share positive lessons. Don't pander to anti-vax fears or paranoia. "Not being vaccinated" was never a virtue. Being able to tell a story, being connected to the land, those can be virtues -- tell us how and why!
And when you're ready to confront your own mortality and post-reproductive lifecycle stages, share that with us too. I think we'd learn a lot from an honest telling of your experience and reflecitons.
Once again, I read this aloud to my husband as we sipped our coffee while sitting next to each other to start the day. Our “retired people” routine, the luxury of time. I only read aloud if the point is profound. I relate to your story from the horse squishing incident, although my event was from a saddle horse, not a working beast, to the iVax. The dating couple and their inattention to one another showed me why, exactly, these people should not breed. I am a livestock producer and cannot help myself using our lingo. I have an iPhone 8 which replaced my iPhone 5 a year ago or so, and an IPad so I can have a real time map to assist my poor sense of direction. The talking lady map is no help to a visual processor. It was the iVax section which caused me to back up and read aloud. We had already decided to wait a spell on the boosters as the clown show plays out. I really hate clowns. Many technologies are incredibly useful, but come with such high prices, literally and figuratively. Labeling this one iVax is brilliant and cannot be unseen. You do know you are amazing? Thanks for yet another thought producing message.
I resisted technology for a long time…finally broke down and got an iPhone because my old flip phone could no longer communicate with my brother who lives in Mexico, and my husband teased me that a third world country had more advanced technology than I did!
I did not expect to love it as much as I did, but I am a lover of knowledge and research, and soon became enamored with having a computer in my pocket, and the whole world of information in my hand. I was slow to join social media, having a cynical and suspicious nature, and started to join and post only after censorship became the norm; it was an act of resistance and rebellion, performative in nature perhaps, but I felt the need to do something.
When the covid pandemic began I was initially fearful of the virus, and diligently masked up and disinfected my groceries before bringing them in the house. I was intrigued and hopeful with regards to the vaccines, but also fearful of getting one due to a life-long history of severe allergic reactions to multiple medications, and the lack of long-term testing and research with these new vaccines.
Soon, the narratives began to change, and things we were promised were true were swept away by the corporate media as if they had never been uttered, to be replaced by new truths, which would soon also be replaced, in an endless cycle that never acknowledged any discrepancy with past iterations of “the science”.
And the censorship began in ernest: anyone who diverged from the party line was erased from existence, with no acknowledgement, as if they had never been.
Then those who dared to resist the new mandates to get vaccinated (for whatever reason; no valid justification was allowed) became demonized as “unvaxxed” (i.e. unclean) and blamed for all the ills of the planet.
My cynicism and determination to resist has only grown as I have watched this unfold. We are entering a new age of tyranny, and my new motto is “you cannot comply your way out of tyranny”.
I don’t know where or how this will end. But I will not comply.
"I-Vax" -- I genuinely laughed out loud when I got to that.
This glowing piece, and the vision of a dude wearing a Patagonia hoodie with "Live Simply" emblazoned on the front, his face lit up as he diddles with his iPhone, convinced me it's time to downgrade. But who will read the magnificent stuff you write Walter? People don't read books anymore, during this spooky era as what's erroneously called "civilization" lingers, "moments away from going dark," or what's worse, from morphing into the Zuck's Creepy Metaverse.
Beautifully written and powerful, as all of his work is. I'm mulling the irony that I would not have seen it but for the tech that delivered it to me.
Beautiful description of the fraught moment we're in. The ease of digital consumerism is astonishing, and since I'm inherently super-lazy, I need to be more vigilant about it. Damn that Bezos, he really is an evil genius with the whole "one-click" thing.
I love how you tied this all back to the horse suffocating you and how It's relatable to today.
It's one of my favorite forms of writing/reading not sure why.
You went full circle with this so beautifully!!
If a guy grabbed his phone after sex with me, I'd burn him with my cigarette! Lol.
Thanks for this. I too have found my line in the sand.
I just discovered this guy from a link in a Matt Taibbi piece. Brilliant writing.
This is brilliant. I am dazzled. Thank you. And to Matt for pointing the way.
My Mother’s oldest brother had two teams of Belgian houses. Tom and Mike were one pair and forgot the other two. They had Irish names similar to those of my numerous cousins - many of whom were born after these horses. I lived with them in the summer as a grade school kid with my 4 older cousins. This was rural western Iowa in the 1950’s. About 40 acres of oats and hay were farmed with these teams out of 260. My uncle kept all the old equipment for mowing, bundling (oats), elevating, shelling, etc. Hard work because the oat bundles were shocked by hand to dry in the sun and the hay distributed over rope slings in the wagon by pitch fork in the full heat of summer. It all came back to the barn where the Belgians ate the hay and oats they/we harvested and straw was used to bed their stalls plus the other riding horses and a few milk cows.
They were huge gentle beasts who responded to their names and numerous voice commands. Four foot whitish tails that felt like sandpaper strips when they hit your face. Never got pinned because I was too small then plus my chore was to give them each a gallon of oats in the bunks in the front of their stall plus their hay. My boy cousins were tall enough to curry them. While they could easily damage you without knowing it in a tight stall, I would like to think they would not have done it intentionally.
Yes. Backing away from those haunted screens and their insistent updates. Turning back to the book shelves, the sheet music, the scrapbooks of faded snapshots. Re-learning to write by hand. 33 1/3 rpm. (We took it all for granted.) I want offline to feel actual, online to again be artificial, as it always was.
I loved Walter Kirn's book Mission to America. He's an intelligent, interesting writer. I don't feel the need to share all of his opinions about things; I don't, in fact. About the vaccine, it seems to be helping people not to get very sick, this time around. I have been vaccinated and got the booster. It is not a big issue for me one way or the other. People always said I should get a flu shot but I never did. Didn't see any need to, and wore masks when I had a bad cold, before it became a thing, and told clerks in grocery stores that I was ill and they might want to wash their hands after touching my groceries and handling my credit card. Good ol' mind. It can go anywhere. We train our minds, don't forget that- you train yours, and I train mine. That's why I like Kirn's writing. It's interesting to see where he goes with what he observes. I subscribe to a few other Substacks, and read them when I have time. And being new to this one, I am reading and seeing how I feel about being connected to it. Anyway it's easier than having to listen to hours of Joe Rogan, though not as reliable as Heather Cox Richardson. What am I trying to say here? Nuance is good. Everything is not black or white. Just watched Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Now there is a film that does not try to reduce everything to the good and the bad. We are humans swimming in what we have always swum through. New forms, old problems, new toys, old habits. New skills.
iVax - not sure whether to love you or hate you. Maybe it was just my mistake for trying to drink coffee at the same time as reading.... It’s amazing how far coffee can spray when using laughter propulsion......
Great reflection. The world is now fashioned against the downgrade—I remember the first time I begrudgingly bought a cell phone was in response to the new way social outings were planned: improvisations in the 11th hour. Swimming against such a current will require some real fortitude, and even a measure of new (and maybe delightful) lonesomeness.
Walter, you're such an amazing storyteller. You take these dots and connect them with an emotional valence and build to a payoff, and 9 times of 10 them payoff is some calculated learned stupidity meant to pander to whatever media bubble you've immersed yourself in. You're better than this!
COVID shots aren't iVax de-sexualizing our youth any more than the flu shot is. Kids are living in a different environment now, but the changes are more with the observer than the observed. You and your entire generation have desexualized because you've gotten older and that's what happens. The world isn't ending, but the end is always on the horizon for any given individual, and the older you get the closer than seems.
Use your powers to teach and inform and share wisdom. Share positive lessons. Don't pander to anti-vax fears or paranoia. "Not being vaccinated" was never a virtue. Being able to tell a story, being connected to the land, those can be virtues -- tell us how and why!
And when you're ready to confront your own mortality and post-reproductive lifecycle stages, share that with us too. I think we'd learn a lot from an honest telling of your experience and reflecitons.