On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , Russell E. Saltzman reflects on death and denial:

This has been a death-obsessed year for me, and no fun. Actually it’s been a couple of those years, starting in 2009. It has become an intrusive preoccupation. I reread some of my contributions on these pages and I seem stuck on the subject. Death shows up in only five of thirty-three articles; six of thirty-four if you count this piece. That’s like, what, sixteen percent? Not so bad, really, given that it looms so large in my mind. Yet I remember thinking while writing the other eighty-four percent, “At least I’m not talking about death.”

Also today, Matthew Hennessey on John Lennon’s bad theology :

As the 1960s became the 1970s, Lennon’s legion of admirers would follow him in his forays into Indian mysticism, transcendental meditation, and primal therapy. In 1970, now a post-hippie but still a seeker, Lennon sang of a personal god that was neither omniscient, transcendental, nor redemptive, but merely “a concept by which we measure our pain.” This clever bit of pop theology was instantly embraced by an exhausted and defeated flower-power generation searching for moral renewal at the dawn of the new decade.