––How could these obstacles be overcome?

Beal: For the first issue, I would take up a collection among my neighbors for our chuck wagon man to do an intensive course at Chez Panisse in cooking, gardening, and foraging. We'd help him set up and tend a little garden, and we wouldn't mind if he had to pick up a few items at the deli. For the second problem, there's an empty lot nearby where we could make a fire and could tie up the horses. Either that or we're just going to have to head west ourselves.

Bock: Well, nothing is wrong with an occasional lark, for one thing.  For another, there’s absolutely nothing in this universe that cannot be solved by ingenuity, hard work, and a couple of hot lesbians in string bikinis making out with one another.

Chenoweth: I don’t think that any of these obstacles will be overcome. In theory they could, but they won’t. We’ll keep moving toward virtual connections, both epistolary and familial. But maybe we could design a nice home for the mammoth, and maybe we could clone him a friend.

McNally: Calisthenics for the digits?  I’m not sure.  Very few of my students have ever done any manual labor.  Maybe we all need to do some tasks that require pliers and a hammer, something to toughen up the fingers.  I’ve recently begun writing longhand again, and I’ve brought my turntable and albums, which I haven’t even looked at in over twenty years, up from my basement and dusted them all off.  I spent winter break building floor-to-ceiling bookcases.  Though I’m only forty-three, I’m growing increasingly tired of technology.  And so, in some very small way, I’m fighting back by reclaiming those things that are disappearing from our culture.  I don’t want to lose books.  I don’t want to quit writing by hand.  I don’t want to waste any more days reading the opinions of people who feel compelled to express them not because they have any knowledge on the subject but because they have access to the Internet.  When the end of the world comes, it won’t be with a whimper; it’ll be with a cacophony of ring-tones.  And how depressing will that be.

Reyn: June 4, at my friend Sonya’s apartment, Red Bull martinis and Saint-Émilion, roasted chicken and Nosferatu. Dressed in DKNY. Anybody? Anybody?

Trachtenberg: Maybe start by inculcating Americans with the reality principle. And bring back the cool black cat emblem.


_{Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel WE’RE SO FAMOUS, editor of DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE FILMS OF JOHN HUGHES, and co-founder of POST ROAD, a national literary magazine based out of New York and Boston}