Word: presentism
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Ramon Arias, executive director of Bay Area Legal Aid in Oakland, Calif., agrees, noting that he would "emphatically" welcome new associates with open arms. Still, Arias adds that his organization is so understaffed that an influx of young and eager associates could present an already overworked infrastructure with a host of logistical challenges. "A lot depends on our capacity to incorporate these lawyers in an effective way," he explains. "Who oversees employee benefits? What about health insurance? Bar dues? Nonpersonnel costs...
...brighten up the place, I offer a housewarming present: a framed picture of me. Tester admires it a little too long and says he'll put it right above his desk--in a way that, if I did not know better, would make me think irony had reached Big Sandy, Mont. I cheerily point out that he's across the hall from Daniel Inouye, who is from Hawaii. "I get to say 'Aloha' every morning. Maybe he'll invite me to Hawaii," Tester says...
...everything really has changed. More than a year into the Great Recession, we still aren't sure if there's a bottom in sight, and six months after the financial system began imploding, it's still iffy. The party is finally, definitely over. And the present decade, which we've never even agreed what to call - the 2000s? the aughts? - has acquired its permanent character as a historical pivot defined by the nightmares of 9/11 and the Panic of 2008-09. Those of us old enough to remember life before the 26-year-long spree began will probably spend...
...hard work, practical ingenuity, common sense, fair play. And then there's our wilder, faster and looser side, that packet of attributes that makes us American instead of Canadian: impatient, hell-bent, self-invented gamblers, with a weakness for blue smoke and mirrors. A certain fired-up imprudence was present from the beginning, but it required a couple of centuries for the most extravagant version of the American Dream to take hold: starting with the California Gold Rush in 1849 - riches for the plucking, with no adult supervision - we have been repeatedly wont to abandon prudence and the tedium...
...utterly international nature of our present economic hell makes it all the scarier. But in the long run, I think we will also see an upside: the meltdown amounts to a spectacular moment of global consciousness, this generation's version of the Apollo astronauts' iconic 1968 photograph of the earth from the moon - an unforgettable reminder that all 6.7 billion of us are in this together, profoundly and inextricably interdependent. (The sublime always has a bit of terror mixed...