Essays by Larry Barnett
The coronavirus has reportedly killed over 60,000 people in America as of April 30th – probably far more – a large number but still a small percentage of our total population. It’s effects on life, on the other hand, have affected all 325 million of us. Jobs have been lost, family life… Read the rest
Most analyses of economic collapse focus on the effects of wealth inequality, financial malfeasance, and inadequate government regulation. Centuries of such analyses – by Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Polanyi, Friedman, Krugman, Graeber, Picketty and many more – have extensively examined… Read the rest
Communication between people is a mix of words, gestures, facial expressions and tonality; in many circumstances, how we communicate is what we communicate; it’s a matter of nuance. Words delivered with a sneer are received differently than those delivered with a smile. By observing the nuances… Read the rest
I’m currently sporting a hair style I call the Covid; in other periods it’s been called the Einstein, a wild style ill-suited to going out of the house.
Over my 72 years, I’ve had all sorts of hair styles. In my childhood, a crew-cut was forced upon me by my father, a man with little in … Read the rest
You’ve got to hand it to Madison Avenue; in response to the coronavirus pandemic American corporations have barely missed a beat in altering their commercial sales pitch, reassuring consumers that this unpleasant shopping hiatus will not last forever and that a return to fevered consumption… Read the rest
Living things occupy space and declare territory; this is true of plants and animals alike. To the extent possible, a matter of both genes and luck, each living thing extends its sphere of influence. In simple one-celled… Read the rest
We humans like to believe we represent the pinnacle of evolution, even going so far as to characterize ourselves as being in the image of God. It is true, insofar as we can tell, that human beings are the only animals on earth with self-consciousness and the ability to use written forms of communication… Read the rest
Among the many effects of the Corona virus pandemic, one of the most remarkable is the widespread use of facial masks. Initially such masks were medical in style, the antiseptic-type nurses and health workers wear in hospitals; but before long a cottage industry of mask-making blossomed across America… Read the rest
Humor during a pandemic can be touchy; people are justifiably worried and lives have been turned upside down. Accordingly, a plan to place a set of April Fools’ advertisements I created for the Sonoma Valley Sun got scrapped in favor of other, more serious, content. But here we are on April Fools’… Read the rest
I first met Jacques Lehmann and Katou Fournier when they walked into my booth at the New York Stationary show in the early 1980s. At that time conventions in New York were held at the Coliseum, a multi-story building with escalators located at Columbus Circle, where the 55-story Time/Warner tower now… Read the rest
When I was just a wee lad seven decades ago, Sundays were different than any other day of the week. For many Americans, Sundays were a day for Church or Temple; we were not a religious family, however, and Sunday services played no major part in my upbringing. What made Sundays different was the quiet.
Almost… Read the rest
I find myself feeling grateful to have such a large library of books. In these times of no toilet paper, I’ve got months of dual-purpose reading material, and it’s comforting to know that if the toilet paper shortage continues, we’ve got it covered.
Generally, I’d find myself… Read the rest
When we speak of domesticating animals, we’re referring to a guided transition from wild animal to one that tolerates, and even seeks out, people. The word “domestication” shares linguistic roots with the word “domicile,” meaning home. Thus domesticated animals… Read the rest
What’s to be done when those we love and care about become the potential agents of our own demise? This pandemic presently presents us with an entirely foreign situation in America, where we have been largely spared the horror and pathos of war and the intimate experience of death surrounding … Read the rest
I grew up watching television, and have had a TV in my home for my entire life. My childhood was filled with cartoons, bloodless westerns and Walter Cronkite soberly delivering the CBS Evening News. Everything about television has changed, of course; today TV is a globalized content delivery system… Read the rest
We can peer into the farthest reaches of space and identify objects and forces of such massive proportion that they’re virtually inconceivable. In the other direction, we can dive into the quantum world, an unfathomable, infinitesimal realm that contains the very building blocks of matter. Science… Read the rest
Well, here you have it. This is how slowing consumerism and seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions looks and feels: empty terminals, slowed shopping and quiet streets. It’s a lousy way to get there, but ironically the world-wide pandemic is changing habits of consumption in ways a purely… Read the rest
We live in two worlds, the world of the large and the world of the small. The large world includes those things we can see without any instruments, and the small world includes those things we can see only by using instruments like electron microscopes… Read the rest
Abstract: Self-consciousness is the sustained delusion of self and other, the capacity for objectifying both thoughts and objects as if they exist in states of separation. While animals in general have the capacity to identify features of and interact with their environment, it does not appear that… Read the rest
Super Tuesday appears to have provided the likely answer to the question of who will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President this November, and it ain’t Bernie Sanders. Despite his win in California, the combined votes for Biden and Bloomberg in this … Read the rest