Just a few days more until Halloween. It is raining now. We’ve yet a hard frost here in the Fox River Valley. The trick or treat experience for children depends upon the weather. Adults hope that the evening will be without inclement weather and not too cold. It is late October after all. More…
Continuing the theme of outdoor, full scale dioramas, another household in Batavia offers the theme of a Madame Butterfly gathering of spirits on Halloween. The vivid colors juxtaposed with the somber skeletal reminders of death is effective to teach that life and death are never separated. Additional background on Halloween: The festival of Samhain…
Halloween. On the eve of October 31st, the sun sets and sidewalks are transformed by children dressed in costumes of all descriptions, even adults embellished with face paint, – to celebrate a festival of ghosts, goblins, a few hours of zany merriment. Adults are allowed to give expression to the inner child, to participate…
Saturday 11:35 AM is quite late for me to be writing here at Starbucks. But who cares? I will not care as long as I come up with some good words. I awakened at 6AM in order to be present on the sidelines to observe and cheer a grandson play his final soccer game…
I awakened a few minutes ahead of the alarm. Sometimes that happens. That part of me which eludes words, wanted to be conscious, awake/alive… Thus began my day. On my way to Starbucks, I could sense that Friday will be warm, a return of comfortable weather, prior to the certain advent of frost, and…
Fall is a divine time of year. Fall is the season of harvest. As well, the days grow shorter, a chill descends, sunlight falls oblique upon the earth and the maple leaves catch fire, and begin to fall. They fall one by one, finished, the alchemy of chlorophyll having utilized sunlight to make sugar. …
All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called “Celts,” in our language “Gauls,” the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. – excerpt The Gallic War by Julius Caesar (written in 53 BCE),…
It [laughter] burns as it comes into contact with death; from the symbols of the emptiness of death it draws a heightened consciousness of being. …It brings us out, for a time, from the impasse in which life is enclosed by those whose only concern is to preserve it. …those arts which sustain anguish…
Egoism is like trying to swim without relying on the water, endeavoring to keep afloat by tugging at your own legs; your whole body becomes tense, and you sink like a stone. -Alan Watts Egoism… There are many untethered egos about these days. I think that capitalism as a way-of-life, breeds this illusion of…
It is not so much a matter of what you do as of how you do it, not so much the content as the style of action adopted. -Alan Watts I heard more than once from a conservative-minded friend that former President Trump accomplished some good things. Perhaps. Even to concede my friend’s point,…
