A few good articles

Riding in a car for several hours each day, there's a lot of time for NPR, audio books (we're currently listening to The Great Gatsby), radio (I've gotten into Pandora about a decade late), and yes -- work.

Some of my favorite recent articles:
(1) The "Busy" Trap from the New York Times:

"Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications...

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day...

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day...

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets..."

(2) An Adam Gopnik interview on adventures on the A train, called "Jazz Junctions: Riding New York's A Train." "It's New York's Amazon; it's the river that we ride on, and every imaginable tribe can be found on its bank."  Hearing about the music of the tracks and the dynamism of New York, I'm reminded of music of the highway and the music of the railroad tracks across America (Johnny Cash and his railroad-themed songs have become a road trip favorite).

(3) An up-ed in The Washington Post's called "Is the US a Land of Liberty or Equality."  Robert Samuelson begins:

If you asked my true religion, I would not answer anything practiced in a church, synagogue or mosque. My real religion is America, and I feel privileged that, among the world’s 7 billion people, I am one of the roughly 300 million lucky enough to be an American. This transcends mere patriotism. I believe in what this country stands for, even though I acknowledge its limits and failures. As individuals, we are no better than most(selfishness and prejudice having survived). As a society, we have often violated our loftiest ideals (starting with the acceptance of slavery in 1787). Our loud insistence of “exceptionalism” offends millions of non-Americans, who find us exceptional only in ourrelentless boasting.

But these caveats do not dim my love of country. I am still stirred by “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I think our messy mixture of democratic traditions, respect for the individual and economic dynamism commands a unique place in human history. In most societies, people are marked by where they were born, their ethnic heritage or religious conviction. In the United States, these are secondary. Americans’ self-identity springs from the beliefs on which this country was founded, including the belief that no one is automatically better than anyone else simply by virtue of birth.