Forty Is ... An Age At Which

Everyone Who Deals With Teens Seems To Agree That The Most Important And Toughest Job Is Staying In Connection And Conversation ... Not Delivering A Lecture But Saying What We Think.

It Is Not That Fathers Are Better Or Worse, Not That They Are More Loved Or Criticized, But Rather That They Are Viewed With Far Less Intensity. There Is No Philip Roth Or Woody Allen Or Nancy Friday Who Writes About Fathers With A Runaway Excess Of Humor, Horror ... Feeling. Most Of Us Let Our Fathers Off The Hook.

Our 'mistakes' Become Our Crucial Parts, Sometimes Our Best Parts, Of The Lives We Have Made.

When Speech Is Divorced From Speaker And Word From Meaning, What Is Left Is Just Ritual, Language As Ritual.

Once Upon A Time We Were Just Plain People. But That Was Before We Began Having Relationships With Mechanical Systems. Get Involved With A Machine And Sooner Or Later You Are Reduced To A Factor.