Across the Pond

My kindle, my salvation: books in our home The New York Times Magazine recently ran an article by Carina Chocano on us and the electronic age: The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg . Reading it, I learned about a Facebook app offered by the German postal service DHL . The app allows users to convert their Facebook activity into "a handsome book containing all your fondest social-media memories, converted into, and preserved as, commemorative infographics". I can understand why DHL would come up with the application: Facebook books will have to be shipped, which means business for the mailing service. What I don't get is why we would want to use the app. Maybe I am just not a big enough fan of Facebook but to me the one big advantage of digitization is space related. Whatever I have stored virtually takes up as much room as my kindle and my PC plus the back-up system it is connected to. The belongings of me as a cyborg fit into a small carry-on travel bag. Compare t...

Last week a friend here in L.A. asked me whether Austrians celebrate Thanksgiving too. At first I was stunned because I thought of the origins of this day  and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony. But then I reconsidered. Doesn't everyone have something to be grateful for? Why shouldn't all countries recognize a  national day of giving thanks? I celebrated my first Thanksgiving in a small café in Prague, Czech republic, which was called Red Hot & Blues. The place unfortunately closed very recently but it used to be a  favorite hangout for American expats. It was there, in 1996, that I ate my first sweet potatoes, my first pumpkin pie, and my first pecan pie. I remember the food as good but most of all I recall engaging in lively conversation with the two strangers at our table and that the café was filled with laughter and happiness. It was like a giant family party. Thanksgivings since then - one at the home of friends in Prague, another in a cabin ...

"Overconsumed America: are we big, fat, gluttonous jerks?" Patt Morrison asked this question today on her show on Southern California Public Radio. Her guest was Gayle Bessenoff, assistant professor of psychology at Southern Connecticut State University. Go to "overconsumed"?  to hear the interview and comments from listeners.

The decorating season is upon us;  Martha Stewart leads the way. Since September and until the end of the year we in America are going all out to adorne anything that can be adorned - and what can't? - with the accessories of Halloween, Christmas, and fall. Right now it's about pumpkins, skeletons, ghouls but cometh November we will box those things up. We will make room for the symbols of Thanksgiving and fall, for leaves, turkeys, and nuts. (Admittedly, this second wave of decorations is not nearly as powerful as the Halloween wave, though it did seem to be gaining momentum in the wasteful years that led to the economic downturn.) After Thanksgiving, on the following Saturday or Sunday, we get ready for the ultimate decorating show: Christmas. We will string lights along our roof tops, blow up plastic Santas and reindeer, plop them in our front yards, drape clouds of artificial snow around them. We will put up our Christmas trees with their ribbons...