So it goes...

Last weekend I woke up and my phone didn't. It was dead. Kaput. Bricked. The night before, when I tried to access it, it would shut off as quickly as I turned it on. It was behaving badly. Facebook was wonky too. It would open, then close saying "Sorry, Facebook can't start," or some such message of hopelessness. It was a nearly 4 year old Samsung Galaxy S6. I loved the phone, it rarely gave me problems and despite a battery that died halfway through the day, it worked pretty flawlessly. I had the oldest phone in my family, so was due for an upgrade anyway. Now, understand that I have a love/hate relationship with these things, more hate than love, frankly. I think as a culture we've created devices of distraction and disconnection. There is a wonderful photo journalism article in The Sun magazine by Gianpaolo La Paglia that captures peoples' obsessions with their phones quite well. I feel that we've gone down a path we can't get back up...

My mother in-law bought me a subscription to The Sun magazine years ago ,and now renews it every year for my birthday. I think it is a magazine that most people would cringe at reading. It is all nonfiction and some poetry, but the stories are long and the print small. Most people like bite sized magazines with articles you can finish over a piece of pizza. Well, with this magazine I've grown to love reading it and usually do so from cover-to-cover. I've got my wife hooked on it now too, and we often ask each other "Do you have this month's Sun?" Every month they interview a different expert or scientific celebrity and often times those are the best part of the magazine. This month they interviewed  Jack Turner, who has a fascinating resume including Mountain Guide, Author, and a degree Philosophy. His interview was so engaging I actually highlighted some of his quotes. His perspective on the outdoors mirrors my own so much that I wanted to share some of them. ...