Twenty-one years, in the context of a human life, is a long time. It is almost one third of the average human life expectancy, worldwide. It was, and still is for certain things, the arbitrary number of years it takes for a child to reach “adulthood.” For many species, 21…
About 17 years ago, I was in between the Wayne Brown Correctional Facility (Nevada County Jail) serving 40 days of a 60 day sentence for a probation violation and the Calaveras County Jail for a 90 sentence on the charge that got me violated in Nevada County. I was coming…
I usually have some “big” thoughts on my annual ride to Sturgis. This year, my eighth consecutive pilgrimage to the Mecca of all the motorcycle things (my seventh consecutive actual ride there) is no different, but I have not dwelt on it much nor does it have to do much…
Six day ago, I posted a quote from ski film maker/documentarian Warren Miller to my “timeline” on Facebook. It was, in true Miller fashion, clever, sarcastic and said more about a lot of shit than a paragraph or more ever could. Two days before that, I posted a screenshot of…
I’m not exactly sure how many lifetime motorcycle miles I’ve ridden. I can make a pretty good guess how many I have rolled up in the past 10+ or so years, however. The miles logged from the time I bought my first bike when I was 18 years-old (a Honda…
This is the beginning. Actually, this is the documented beginning, the real beginning began, probably, when this whole social media morass did. The end began when it started. But, for all intents and purposes, as a practical matter, this is the start of a process in which I extract myself…
I maybe should be more appreciative toward Facebook — or whoever developed the idea that Facebook commandeered its “memories” function from (I want to say, “Timehop,” but I’m not sure and don’t care enough to do the research). I’m not being facetious, and this is not a new revelation. I…
There is a consensus that the level of overall skill in terms of grammar, spelling and written composition, generally, is not what it once was. That might not be entirely true. It might be that, with the advent of easy publication of written texts, the level of skill (or lack…
In the fall of 2003, I returned to school for the first time in many, many years. My previous attempts at higher education were mixed, but in total, unsuccessful. I had less than two years of college credits accumulated, and they were scattered across several areas — too many were…
I wrote this 12 years ago, when I was a middle-aged, first-year grad student. I was still in the early stages of what could be described as my “new life,” fresh off a very successful completion of a BA and more than four years free from the a life controlled…
Michael Althouse
Lecturer/professor of communication studies at California State University, Sacramento. www.michaelalthouse.com
