This is a nice piece of writing. It reminds me of all the beat lit I read in my teens and early twenties. Here's one of my favorites:

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for

I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache

self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went

into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families

shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the

avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what

were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,

poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery

boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the

pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans

following you, and followed in my imagination by the store

detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our

solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen

delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in

an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the

supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The

trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be

lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love

past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,

what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and

you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat

disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955

There is a time-honored method to building personal security and wealth in the US. It’s the practice of buying an old house and fixing it up yourself. The majority of the cost of most home repairs is the labor. If you do the work yourself, you gain the cost of that labor in equity.

You say you are not "handy." However, most home repairs are not rocket science. The Home Depot empire was built on this idea. There are how-to books for just about every type of home repair. You can learn how to do this stuff. It’s not that hard. Just take your time and proceed deliberately. (Measure twice, cut once.)

If you want real hands-on experience with this type of work, volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Your local vocational school might also have classes in this type of work, including serious topics like carpentry and wiring.

Additionally, you'll have the creative outlet you crave. What could be more satisfying than slowly restoring the home you love?

Just be careful with do-it-yourself wiring and natural gas, and don’t fall off the roof!

Dear LW,

You say that you are suffering from depression, that you have in the past, and that you are considering medication. You also say that you are thinking about quiting journalism. Perhaps it would be best to stick with the journalism until you deal with the depression.

Medication may not be enough to cure the depression. Sometimes talk therapy is needed, along with the meds. In any case, the depression distorts your view of the world and yourself. It would be a shame if quit journalism and then found out later, after the depression was cured, that you made a mistake. Your good grades seem to indicate that you are doing something right.

One wonders if the gorey version of history presented in this movie isn't a way for Gibson to justify the horrors visited upon the Central and South American natives on behalf of Catholicism.

The author states:

Also, while it's legitimate to blame the Spanish for all kinds of sins in the Americas, let's notice two things. 1) the devastation they inflicted on the native populations, while significant, was not nearly as total as that inflicted by Anglo-Saxon colonists in North America. (Which country today has a majority population of "Indian" and part-Indian people, Mexico or the United States?)

The difference in current native populations probably has to do with the Spanish practices of native slavery, intermarriage, and domination through religious conversion. It also probably has to do with the relative sizes of the two regions and the numbers of natives in those regions. In any case, to say that the Spanish were less cruel than the Europeans that settled North America is ridiculous. The history of both the Anglo-Saxons and Spanish in New Mexico is well known and there was plenty of cruelty from both parties.

I also wonder about the accuracy of the author’s claims about the Aztec and Mayan cultures. I suspect that the same colonists that destroyed their cultures wrote most of the early histories of these peoples. Portraying these peoples as brutal, violent, and disease-ridden would be self-serving, just as I think Gibson’s movie is.

Thanks to cfung for pointing out that the extreme depiction of the Mayan culture presented in this movie and O'Hehir's review is probably wrong.

You'd think that civilization would be through characterizing native peoples as bloodthirsty savages.

It's great to read an essay about raising children that is not boastful, whining, or saccharine sweet.

Good luck with those kids, it sounds like they are going to turn out fine!

I suppose 100 other people have alrady said this, but if you stop writing, filming, and photographing her, she will go away. The media defines her and she lives and dies according to your attention.

Why is this stuff on Salon.com anyway?