David Soubly

(This is the second in a series of observations on our pandemic times.)

I’ve argued elsewhere that misinformation endangers us more today than even the exposure of our personal information; that information’s usefulness, its value, is better understood by those who use it versus those who own it; that we each create the value of the information we see by attaching it to things we already know: our tacit knowledge, the sum of our learnings, influences the value of what we see.

Now we are in...

(This is the third in a series of observations on our pandemic times.)

I am a Shaggy Man. In that, I am not alone.

A whole lot of guys have become Shaggy Men over the last few months, thanks to the COVID lockdowns. In our state, barbershops and beauty salons were one of the last places to reopen. I suspect that’s the case across the country.

We’ve seen rebellions in this Shaggy Man era. In Michigan, my home state, we had a 77-year-old barber who refused to close his barber shop until the...

When I was a kid, the world didn’t seem dangerous. It was just out there. Whether backyard or neighborhood park, it was a place to explore. I didn’t realize my parents and other adults were watching out for me.

I went to kindergarten when I was five. The school was several blocks away, across a somewhat busy street that had adult crossing guards. But there were still side streets to cross on our own.

My very first day, Mom walked me to school, and a genial old man, the school principal,...