Alex Dobrenko

Here’s what’s ahead in this edition:

• An August of ideas: my Cali­fornia origin story


• The slow lift: a discovery


• Links and recommendations: not toooo many


• Checking in: what’s Robin doing?

his mindset provides a method and a framework for understanding, appreciating, and acting upon obstacles that life throws at you . This allows you to become “ antifragile ” in the sense that you actually gain st rength by going through and learning from challenging times. The greater the challenge , the greater your strength becomes. I learned a... See more

As you use family trips and family dinner nights to facilitate your son discovering himself and his purpose, he will learn how to take what he learned under your care and adjust it to those stages of his life when he is under his own care. What will be common to each stage, though, is your gift of encouraging him to be a human being first, and

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Taking notes, I’ve come to realize, is a form of collecting. I’ve never been interested in collecting physical things, but when it comes to beautiful literary quotes, I have thousands of notebook entries.

But that is the case with so much of what’s new. We won’t understand it until it’s in the rearview mirror. Culture isn’t stagnating; it’s evolving in ways that we’re struggling to recognize and appreciate. The challenge lies not in reviving what’s dead, but in developing the language to understand what already exists.

I begin the week with the bright intention not to be devoured by the administrative deluge which defines business in the modern age. I sip my coffee and pretend that I am waiting for Sartre or Camus to join me at the Café de Flor. I resist the temptation to turn on my computer so I can keep the grim spectacle at bay for at least another twenty... See more

Hatred is depressing—it is of course depressing to be hated, but it is also depressing to hate. The erosion of the social safety net means that more and more people are at a sudden breaking point, and there are few messages of authentic comfort to offer them in these pitiless times. One is done in by disease, by isolation and despair, and by life

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The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

~W.H. Auden, “Leap Before You Look,” December 1940