Article by Nicholas Casey, NYT, 06/17/2021
Henry with his mom Sarah Risser, October 21, 2017. Cambridge Boat Club, Cambridge, MA I've spent the past week working on the Henry L. Zietlow Memorial Trophy project. My father and I began work on this project almost exactly two years ago, and, finally, it's reached its end stages. In memory, I sense that this work will merge into the unmoored passage of the months through the Covid-19 pandemic; I'll look back on these two years in a very particular time and way that will be marked by a heightened sensation of death and mortality and our places in that arc.
As I write this the pandemic is not over, but its character, post the release of four effective vaccinations this past spring, has very clearly changed. We have a means of protecting ourselves, whether or not we are able, as human beings, to deploy it effectively or humanely. So--the virus has evolved, but so has our capacity to evolve with it.
I read the Nicholas Carey article this morning and found it fascinating. Largely, it's about identity, and questions of self that address the ancient nurture/nature conundrum.
These thoughts are colliding in my head, and then, one of the commentators in Carey's piece chipped in with the quotation that closes this entry.
It pulled some ideas together in my mind about all the things I've written above. Not in a way I could express here--that would take hours of writing and revision for a piece that is meant to be short.
But also it made me want to read Of Human Bondage, to find the context for these words.
As I write this the pandemic is not over, but its character, post the release of four effective vaccinations this past spring, has very clearly changed. We have a means of protecting ourselves, whether or not we are able, as human beings, to deploy it effectively or humanely. So--the virus has evolved, but so has our capacity to evolve with it.
I read the Nicholas Carey article this morning and found it fascinating. Largely, it's about identity, and questions of self that address the ancient nurture/nature conundrum.
These thoughts are colliding in my head, and then, one of the commentators in Carey's piece chipped in with the quotation that closes this entry.
It pulled some ideas together in my mind about all the things I've written above. Not in a way I could express here--that would take hours of writing and revision for a piece that is meant to be short.
But also it made me want to read Of Human Bondage, to find the context for these words.
"There is no such thing as success or failure, only stories."
attr. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage,
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