For The Record- 01. February. 2025

These streets used to look pretty. This town used to look like a city

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This is not (and will never be) a newsletter fueled by hot takes…well, except for records, of course. But Wednesday night's midair collision at DCA put into hellish relief some of the things I've been wrestling with over the last few days. I'm still not entirely sure I've teased each of these out fully, so bear with me.

In that first fall after high school, I did what most Gen X kids did—I did what I was supposed to do and went to college. I wasn't ready, and if I'm honest, I didn't want to, but that's what you did, right? The other option was the military, but two of my friends had just gone in, and their letters home told me enlisting would not be in my best interest. I trusted them–and in hindsight, they were right.

So, I put my faith in the system (or presiding culture) and enlisted at my local junior college. It wasn't in my best interest, either, but at least I was doing something.

My English professor was straight out of Central casting- if we're casting stereotypes. Probably only 6-7 years older than I was. Airy but not obnoxious and performatively Marxist. The kind of guy that would work in references to Trotsky while explaining sentence structure (feel free to roll your eyes here. Lord knows I did).

But he also had a knack for working in really thought-provoking exercises. Out of nowhere, he'd ask things like, "What industry couldn't have existed prior to the Industrial Revolution?" FWIW, my answer was gyms.