Sunday, July 13, 2014

Worry and Wonder


Originally Posted Tuesday, August 13, 2013


How students think of their liaisons with fellow students has clearly changed, and so has the college culture, apparently. All of the evidence points to the fact that college kids today are drinking less, taking fewer drugs and even having less sex than their parents’ generation. Hooking up just isn’t what it used to be (source).  

This should make Q feel a bit better about the future.  But this wont (link).  There are some arguments you just don't want to win. 

I sit at the kitchen table, the sun now rising above the rooftops, racing to the tops of trees.  It is coming up further to the south every day, the days getting shorter.  I've always wondered about this a bit, this dichotomy of shorter days and warmer temperatures, but I know it has to do with the earth's tilting toward the sun.  Still, somehow, it just doesn't seem right.  That is the way of nature. 

From 1950 to 1990, the number of women ages 25 to 54 in the workplace doubled (source).  Why the report chose that age range, I don't know.  When I was growing up, mother's were watchdogs.  They were around all the time, yours or somebody else's, and they modified your behavior.  You had to be more careful.  Reading this article made me curious, so I did some quick research.  During the same period of time, divorce rates doubled as well (source).  I remember that divorced mother's were something different.  They had boyfriends and their kids were changed by that.  Sometimes we'd imagine the secret lives of those women.  They dressed up more than the other moms.  They went out.

The article refers to women who are not in the workforce as a potential resource.   

Things change.  And they don't.  The present is always connected to the past by some weird resemblance that isn't quite right as an old person is connected to his or her infant self. 

Q likes to argue the way other people like to play pool.  It is fun.  It is sport.  Don't worry, old bum.  The future ain't all that they say its gonna be.

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