Are The Humanities Dead?

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

Mike took me to the symphony last weekend, in a giant, beautiful building built by the Segerstrom family, who we later learned came to Orange County in 1898, bought 40 acres of farmland, and were successful lima bean farmers. They eventually transitioned away from farming and into business, and now more or less own the city of Costa Mesa, CA. They give a lot of money away and invest heavily in the arts. The best way to have money is to come from money, and the Segerstrom family is the living, breathing, dying definition of generational wealth.

I wasn’t excited about the symphony but I was curious. After first going to the wrong building entirely (where Moulin Rouge! was playing), then finding out that our tickets were for the previous night and begging a man behind a glass screen to let us in tonight, we settled in our seats in a section above the ground section but below the top section. We were right on the railing, so we had an incredible view of the tops of a lot of heads. We stood up and sat down eighty times to let people by. I sipped wine from a plastic cup and felt myself get sleepy. I checked my watch and it was only 7:47 p.m.

The crowed at the symphony skewed heavily retired. In the woman’s bathroom ahead of the show, an elderly woman with a walker and a slight limp asked me if I’d like to go…