Songs on the Titanic

Let’s humble ourselves as Wall Street flounders | Andrée Seu

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

These are tough days for writers. Suddenly all the things you thought of writing about—health insurance reform, failing schools, the election, whether Ryan Howard or Brad Lidge should be the National League MVP—seem unimportant. The Top 40 radio hits sound like Wallace Hartley's orchestra playing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" the last hour of the Titanic's ride. The Old Testament prophets of doom seem the only sensible men.

When I was in the hospital getting my suspicious heart checked out, two doctors found a lump in my left breast and said I should look into it. (Could be a cyst, of course.) But it doesn't seem to matter as much as before what the diagnosis will be. Wall Street's panic has leveled the playing field. Healthy people are no better off than sick people, nor young people than old ones.