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One Life. Five Wives. The Free Press
Earlier this year, we announced our first-ever essay contest for high school students, asking them to describe a problem troubling American society and how they would fix it. More than 400 teenagers entered, writing about social media, porn, high school bullies, and more. It was a smashing success, and you can read the winning essay here.
After all that, we thought it only fair to pass the mic to the older generation. This October, we asked readers aged 70 and up to tell us a story about an event that shaped their lives and helped bring them wisdom or a fresh perspective.
Once again we had more than 400 submissions, this time from 47 states—hey, Alaska, Vermont, and Nevada, reach out next time!—and 10 countries, including the UK, Australia, South Korea, Italy, South Africa, and China.
Ilan Chaim from Jerusalem wrote about fighting in the Six-Day War.
Jo Ann Jennings from Kansas wrote about joining the Peace Corps after dreaming about it for fifty years.
Bill Hankins from Cordele, Georgia, submitted a beautiful poem. One poignant line read: Peace will begin when expectation ends.
We have spent weeks sifting through all of the entries, which contained the kind of profound wisdom and wit that can be accrued only over time. Today, we announce our three runners-up:
First, we have Joan McCaul, a 74-year-old living in Queensland, Australia. She is a retired teacher who enjoys films, her children and grandchildren, and spending time in her garden. In her beautiful essay, she reflects on the wisdom we might miss out on if we don’t slow down and listen—especially to our children.
Cheri Block Sabraw is a 73-year-old living in Montana. She taught writing for 26 years and founded her own academy at 48. She has a master’s degree and wrote a thesis on W. G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz. Her hobbies include oil painting, writing, and walking. In her essay, she writes about the mayhem and chaos of everyday life, and describes how there is a way out. And it is, in fact, quite lovely.
Finally, Jonathan Rosenberg, 72, is a playwright and producer living in San Diego, California. His most recent musical, East Carson Street, will have its world premiere at Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey, in May 2024. In his essay, he writes about finding The One after four failed marriages.
We are humbled and honored that so many of you chose to share your stories with us. Stay tuned for the winning essay tomorrow—and tell us about your own hard-won wisdom in the comments.
Tomorrow, we’ll announce the winner of our contest. And if you want to support our mission of publishing writers both young and old, become a Free Press subscriber today:
For the past four weeks, car-sized objects have been reported flying over critical infrastructure and military assets in New Jersey. They come from the ocean, appearing around sunset, and sometimes turn off their lights. Residents demand answers, but despite scrambling for information, state and local authorities say they remain largely in the dark.
But on Wednesday, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) offered what he said was “the real deal” explanation of the mysterious drones. “Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones. It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America,” he told Fox News.
Van Drew’s account, which he said came from “very high, very qualified, very responsible” sources, was startling.
Yet in a matter of hours, the Pentagon dismissed his claims out of hand. “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States and there’s no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones toward the United States,” said Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon spokeswoman. “We’re going to continue to monitor what is happening, but at no point were our installations threatened.”
I am a 60-year-old Scotsman with a penchant for red suspenders, oolong tea, and the novels of Walter Scott—so no one will ever accuse me of being an arbiter of cool. But to understand politics and even geopolitics you have to understand culture, which is sometimes—often—upstream of both. And to understand culture you have to understand, well, vibes.
Specifically, vibe shifts.
The pop culture commentator Sean Monahan identified three mini-epochs between 2003 and 2020: Hipster/Indie (ca. 2003–9), Post-Internet/Techno (ca. 2010–16), and Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20). Each was defined by a distinct aesthetic, and the vibe shift from one to the other was swift and palpable. As the pandemic receded, New York magazine’s Allison P. Davis predicted that another vibe shift had to be approaching. (And indeed, Monahan has dubbed the new epoch “Pilled/Scene.”)
I confess none of this meant much to me. I couldn’t tell a hypebeast from a hipster if my life depended on it.
But the term finally clicked—and acquired a powerful significance—when it was imported to the world of tech. In a clever Substack post in February, Santiago Pliego tried to sum up the change that had occurred from the epoch of woke—which began with the cancellation of James Damore by Google in 2017—to the unfiltered era of Elon Musk’s X.
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