Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Laura and I had breakfast together at Buttermilk which is an uncommonly good place for biscuits. We reflected upon the many years that we have been together. Our journey has been worthwhile, a mutual learning. In a manner of speaking, from our first meeting, the initial conversation I found her interesting. …
Wake Up, Mario by Martín Espada For Mario Gonzalez Arenales (1994-2021) He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just scaring my wife.—call to the Alameda Police Department, April 19, 2021 They watched him from the window of the house, a man at the fencein a crooked wool cap, chipping at their tree with a comb,…
“Moments are torn from us,” Seneca wrote. “The whole future lies in uncertainty.” Fortune behaves as she pleases, he wrote. As we’ve talked about before, life comes at you fast. It doesn’t rhyme, it doesn’t reason, it doesn’t care about your wants or needs—it just is. All we can do is accept the uncertainty…
Revisionary by Robert Pinsky The globe on a tilted axis means The News. As the icon spins the angle seems to shift. Science has found ancestral Neanderthals. We have a bit of their blood. They painted caves Better than sapiens, as we named ourselves. History has found the Jews who fought for Hitler. Thousands…
Where would I be without a few good friends, without my family? To imagine how different my life could be, I would have never known about books which have changed my life. There’s music which has transformed by sense of self, my being in the world, that I would never discover without a recommendation….
A long quotation on the role of violence, — some difficult issues consequent to deciding upon a violent act, necessary for survival. This world is a violent place. Homo Sapiens often have recourse to violence. Ask any who live in Ukraine, or who lived in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria… Places wet with blood,…
After more than five hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, there was little doubt Emmanuel Macron walked into the grizzly bear’s den — and he got mauled. With more than 100,000 Russian troops and heavy weapons massed on the Ukrainian border, the French president and his advisers had insisted that,…
We object to the inquisitors who want to create faith and virtue from without; We object to all forms of fascism which seek to fashion the happiness of man from without; And also the paternalism which thinks that it has done something for [humankind] by prohibiting him from certain possibilities of temptation, whereas what…
[Humankind] extends his control by instruments which enable him to devour distances and to multiply the output of his effort in time; but he is always and only one. However, instead of accepting his limits, he tries to do away with them. He aspires to act upon everything and by knowing everything. -excerpt the…
This morning the sun was a fingernail of fire above the treeline across the river. This poem was on my mind. Life is a siege, sometimes a pitched battle against the darkness that surely will envelop our dreams — unless you, unless I resist. As we grow older, it happens. The ancient contest between…
