To celebrate Barack Obama winning the 2012 presidential election, I made a whole-wheat Williams pear pie with pecorino sardo and orange-blossom–honey streusel. (I’m going to have to find a shorter name for it. Let’s just call it Un-American Pear Pie for now.)

I’m reading Kant and the Platypus, and I realize I’ve never shared a conversation I had in 2010 in Louisville with Marcel Danesi, who was standing in line behind me at the hotel’s Starbucks, and was drawn to my Italian name on my name tag like a bear to honey.

Danesi: “So, did you study with Umberto?”    
Me: “I took a class with him in my third year. However, I’m a structuralist.”    
Danesi (with a mixture of resignation and mockery): “Oh, so is he.”

At the end of 2011, within my first-degree family circle I’m the only one who’s in his thirties. My first cousins are all in their forties and fifties, and the next generation (the first-once-removed) ranges from zero (born today, even) to twenty-six.

I’m an island.

Was it last year that Mark Zuckerberg introduced the new Facebook message system? Back then, I was so interested I barely remember it happened. What I do remember is that this new system was supposed to be the cat’s pajamas when it came to function and desirability. Quicker than e-mail (yet compatible with it), as informal as text messages (yet, supposedly, cheaper, because tied to the data plan—there would be much to discuss about this), and overall better because centralized within the Facebook experience.