Yesterday I noticed this sign while stopping at a Starbucks. I felt excited at the “sign” of sanity, a public display of reason in a time of covid. Why in the name of humanity should we sacrifice lives, and “sacrifice” is the only word to use. What of this childish desire to assert “freedom”…
Early morning, I left the house, the sun was a fiery ball at the tree line across a frozen river. The vehicle temperature gauge read +2 degrees. A song was playing on the local radio station. I am certain the poets, lyricists, playwrights, are the ones who show us the metaphors, perform the scenes…
Snow continues to fall. I, the creature of habit, fetched my usual cup of coffee from Starbucks, despite the slippery roads. I returned safely. Perhaps I was a little lucky. No accident and here I am. One has to be somewhere, as long as one is alive. I’d rather be in Batavia, Illinois than…
Last night before turning in I watched a piece on the Magellan channel about volcanoes. Scenes of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, before and after the eruption on May 18, 1980 were featured. An eerie aspect in the piece was a radio report, from an observer on the mountain side describing in some…
For Homo Sapiens to live is to be aware of loss. I doubt that is the case for any other mammal. Language, the ability to think and to communicate with symbols allows us to contemplate time in the abstract, with memory of a past, and an imagined future. We are unable to live solely…
A poignant conversation happened between friends this week. The occasion and opportunity for the exchange of words was the death of a renowned self-taught improvisational pianist Michael Jones. Jones lived in Toronto and was an international recording artist. This morning I thought about other losses. Upon waking I learned of the death of Meatloaf,…
Choice/Responsibility and Fate/Doing What Your Daddy Done The trick it seems when it comes to philosophy is to make sense of a coincidence of opposites. On the one hand, is our intuitive sense of choice, that decisions are pivot points with consequences for which we blame ourselves (and others) or believe to be praiseworthy. …
Two things, there are two momentous “passages” the unavoidable transitions attendant to this life. Without any question there are two inescapable events that all living must abide, that of birth and that of death. The first passage recedes in the past, is not even in memory. The second great transition is ahead. I refer…
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. day, the national Federal holiday for marking the birthday of Dr. King. I was in high school, in the South when Dr. King was in the news. King was organizing, raising to consciousness the formal and informal practices by which we whites were relegating black citizens to second…
We spent part of the afternoon at one of the national booksellers, perusing the shelves. Not that I “need” another book. A bookstore is always an agreeable place, and especially on a chill winter’s day. I spent some time examining the display of new fiction hardcover books. A thought came to mind. A…
