Bolger is a broad man, with lank, whitish, chin-length hair and a dignified profile, like a figure from an antique coin. And there’s something almost anachronistically earnest, even romantic, about the reason he gives for spending the past 30-odd years pursuing college degrees. “I love learning,” he told me over lunch last year, without even a touch of irony. I had been pestering him for the better part of two days, from every angle I could imagine, to offer some deeper explanation for his life as a perpetual student. Every time I tried, and failed, I felt irredeemably 21st-century, like an extra in a historical production who has forgotten to remove his Apple Watch.

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Persons: Bolger, —, lamplight, ” Organizations: Apple Watch Locations: Walden