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Backstage Collapsed: Universal Recording and the Architecture of Courtship

A panelist on a recent broadcast conversation made the following argument. Young people across the wealthy world are not having children. Before they do not have children, they do not date. Before they do not date, they do not interact at the dances, the parties, the mixers their parents and grandparents used as the primary infrastructure for finding mates. Even when they show up at such gatherings, they hold the wall, not approaching, not asking, not risking the awkward overture that has been the entry-cost of human pairing for as long as human pairing has been formalized into ritual occasions. The panelist asked why, and answered himself. They are afraid of being recorded. They are afraid that any silly thing they say or any failed dance step or any drunk confession will be filmed and uploaded and used against them by people they cannot identify in advance. So they withdraw. The species, the panelist concluded, cannot continue under such conditions, and the only available remedy is to restrict the technology that produced those conditions.

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The Inheritance: When the Body Remembers What the Mind Cannot

Some secrets do not stay buried. They write themselves into blood and bone. They pass from grandmother to mother to daughter through mechanisms we are only beginning to understand. The Inheritance, the second novel in the Fractional Fiction series, asks what happens when a scientist trained to study transgenerational trauma in laboratory mice discovers that the patterns she has been mapping exist in her own DNA.

The Inheritance: A Fractional Fiction Novel

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Ukraine War Diary

The world is a tiny place of intimacy that informs a greater expanse of suffering. My new friend, Alexander Grushchansky, lives in Ukraine. Before the war he was a jeweler. Now he fires a machine gun. Alexander is also an NFT Artist who raises money with his Art to help pay for the fight against Putin’s illegal war. Alexander and I became friends through his Art, and we have subsequently stayed in communication via Discord where we have held public conversations about the war, and shared private thoughts about the real meaning of a war on a people. Here is Alexander’s story, in diary form, in his own words, processed through translation software. Embedded video was also uploaded by Alexander for publication. All of this is to set forth to tell the truth about what’s really happening in Ukraine, right here, right now.

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New Boles Book for Becoming Job Ready!

Today, I am pleased to share with you my new book — a Boles Book for Becoming Job Ready — and I wrote the book to help young people learn how to wend their way into a new job marketplace, an area that is getting tougher, and more crowded, to survive in, and conquer, every day.

BUY NOW!

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Writing a Journal of Memories: The Education of a Teacher

[Publisher’s Note: What you see on this page is the beginning of a publication project Dr. Howard Stein was preparing for David Boles Blogs in the year 2000 upon the celebration of the occasion of his birth — July 4 — when he was 78-years-old. We have unearthed this early draft of — The Howard Stern Journal of Memories — and we share it with you today so you may not only enjoy Dr. Stein’s wisdom, but also revel in the revision process you can see below in an image of his typewritten submission. You may view a larger size of the image on the Boles.com Howard Stein Archive Page.

Howard’s health began to nag him as the days aged, and he never returned to this project, but you may still read a lot of Dr. Stein’s work here, there and elsewhere. Howard Stein died on October 12, 2012 of heart failure. He was 90. We miss him every moment of every notion and it is amazing that 15 years after he wrote this for us, Howard is still publishing with us from the grave. Howard Stein always said he was “born lucky” — and so, too, are we lucky to have this article! — but this is his story.]

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Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Farrow and the Consequence of Fame

There were two remarkable, maddening, things that happened over the weekend. Both events were related to fame and the failure of human consequence against the living, but the terms of the punishments were different: Both eternal, but one forever ended.

On Saturday, we read in the New York Times about the harrowing child abuse Dylan Farrow suffered at the hands of her infamous father, writer, director, actor and movie producer, Woody Allen.

On Sunday, we learned of the early death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman who, at age 46, lived up to his earlier prescience about fame and fortune leading to a quick Hollywood death.  He made his point real in New York City with a needle jabbed in the arm of his corpse.

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The Sexualization of Platonic Business Relationships: How Many Families Do You Need?

I’ve always found it odd when people you work with, or collaborate with, or may work with in the future, use the phrase “getting into bed together” as a business condiment as if to somehow oddly sexualize what is, in fact and deed, a working relationship that is, if anything, asexually platonic by necessity of average function.

I wonder why there is a need to make a business contract a personal and intimate formality in such a dramatic manner.  Private relationships are bound by blood and emotion and decrees of love and passion.  No public business should operate under any of those terms.  I always wonder why that “in bed” phrase is so important for some people to utter during a negotiation or in a team spirit meeting.

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Kitten Explosion!

I have had to move away from my old house, I have children of my own to protect from the unfriendly dogs and the foxes.

I do sneak back from time to time — and thought I would update you on some of the changes in the growing family of Alentejo cats .

I had heard rumours about new kittens and thought I would go and investigate.   My first couple of return visits I saw nothing but the usual crowd I knew all growing up well. Little Squeak is no longer frail and tiny.  He is growing up into a fine specimen of a cat and his sister Bubbles is blossoming too as is the aloof Nimbus.

Here is Mr B.  One of the naughtiest cat I have ever met!

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The Eggshell Generation: No Freedom for Danger Children

Life has changed for modern children.  When I was growing up in the Midwest, you sought freedom — and if it wasn’t granted with a bicycle, then you found other, more nefarious ways, to run away and play far away from your doorstep.

It isn’t that way any longer.  Today, kids are protected and driven and supervised in organized sports and cultural events.  There’s no spontaneity now because there’s fear of the unknown and danger in the creative.  No sandlot baseball.  No football games with self-set boundaries and special scoring.  Everything is regulation.  There can be no divergence from the norm.

We’re creating a society of young people who are risk-averse and too frightened to set their own agendas and follow their own, unblazed, pathway. Fun is the new mysterious stranger. “Do what you want” is the new monster under the bed.

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Keep a Song in Your Heart: Remembering Lawrence Welk

Every time I visited my grandfather in North Loup, Nebraska — there was one unspoken, but wholly enforced rule — on Sunday nights at 7:00pm, you sat down with him and watched the Lawrence Welk Show on ABC television.

It was an hour of a painful persuasion for a young lad to bear — second only to the never-ending reruns of Hee Haw that aired every single weeknight that I was also forced to watch during each visit.

I never learned to like, or even tolerate, the Welk show.  The show was a matter of saccharine moments topped with thick frosting of faux frivolity and façade.  All show and no substance.  Complete spectacle and no plot.

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