Other thinkers, he notes, advise that the way to cope with death is to live as if every day were your last. Woodruff is planning a different exit: “Thinking of death, I want to live every day as if it were the first for something.” The goal is to squeeze in as much joy as you can, one teeny passion project at a time — and let death cut you off from something.
Maybe that something is as small (and sublime) as a song. Woodruff’s essay calls to mind a 2019 piece from palliative-care doctor Mark Taubert, who over his years of practice paid attention to the last music that dying — no, living! — patients listened to.
Some of them are collected in a playlist here — a little bit of Mahler, a little Elton John.
Music can make death more approachable, Taubert writes, and there are all sorts of scientific benefits with dopamine and the brain’s striatum and whatnot. But really, what could be a better last helping of life?
As Woodruff clarifies, “There’s nothing wrong with dying. All the best people in history have done it.” There’s just an awfully enticing proposition for the meantime.
Ball in the court’s … court
Do parents still do that experimental discipline strategy where they ask the kid facing punishment, “Well, what do you think is fair?” Or is it just Congress and the Supreme Court now?
Columnist Ruth Marcus writes that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has his head in the sand regarding all the recent ethical breaches at the court. Given that “the court’s power derives from its stature,” Ruth says, another branch might have to step in to impose some order.
For that, the Editorial Board favors the bipartisan proposition from Democratic-caucusing Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “The legislation tells the Supreme Court it has to come up with rules within the year,” the Board explains, “without dictating what those rules should be.”
It’s a clever workaround for a legislature historically reluctant to police the court. As congressional scholar Josh Chafetz tells Greg Sargent for his column examining the plan, “If there’s any Supreme Court ethics bill that can pass the Senate, it would be this.”
From Post Opinions writer and producer Kate Woodsome’s project looking squarely at ADHD for what it is: a chronic illness. Not a lifestyle, not a personal failing, not a punchline.
The condition is often misunderstood, sometimes even by people who have it, Kate reports. Medication has also been scarce since the pandemic, with some people in rural areas conceivably needing to call pharmacies 50 miles or more away from home.
Add in upcoming changes to telemedicine rules that will make it harder to start medication, and things look like a crisis.
But Kate takes a deep breath on all our behalves and offers a high-altitude view of what to do. Some of it is governmental; a lot of it starts with you.
Chaser: Kate also notes nascent research into social media’s relationship with ADHD. Mitch Daniels has already seen enough; he recently wrote that social media is itself a pandemic.
Ron DeSantis, ask yourself: “Am I running to replace Donald Trump as the leader of a party remade in his image, or am I running to replace Trumpism with something else?”
Contributing columnist Matt Bai says the Florida governor could benefit from that bit of introspection — and so could the rest of America’s Republicans. Maybe a hard look in the mirror would stop them all from drifting Trump’s way by default.
Folks who want Trumpism will probably just … vote for Trump. But Bai writes that a lot of the country might warm to “a conservative option that doesn’t feel brutal and destabilizing.”
Columnist Henry Olsen looks at Nikki Haley and sees just that, especially on abortion. Lines like, “We must persuade people and find consensus, not push them farther away,” should be lessons for a pro-life movement that comes in way too hot for its own good, Henry writes.
Chaser: Miami-based journalist Lizette Alvarez writes that DeSantis is so focused on winning conservatives nationwide, he seems to have forgotten he lives in a state that runs on immigrants.
- Columnist Michele L. Norris memorializes Harry Belafonte, who from poverty to fame never lost his moral compass.
- Columnist Jennifer Rubin explains how Democrats’ route to retaking the House runs through the “Biden 18” — the Republicans in districts President Biden won in 2020.
- We’ve got one chance to get clean hydrogen incentives right, write climate economists Gernot Wagner and Danny Cullenward.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
The turntable stops spinning
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
