Humankind has exploited it’s own species for as long as recorded history. We’ve enslaved, colonized, worked for low wages-without-benefits the hapless, the unlucky, the victims of circumstance. This is an old story from the construction of the pyramids along the Nile, to the cotton fields of the antebellum South, to Amazon warehouses across America…
What do I owe future generations? That was the question of the evening for the Socrates Cafe group. We met again at Barnes & Noble. Everyone around the table wore a mask. It is yet unclear how truly effective the vaccine will be to protect us from the more contagious Delta virus. Surely this…
Yesterday I walked in the woods. My last attempt to enter Braeburn Marsh I was met with a phalanx of mosquitoes. Outnumbered my determination crumbled, I hastily returned to the house. This summer day I walked along the edge of the marsh paying attention, quietly absorbing the late summer wild flowers. Many things that…
Close enough …! I am thinking of the Blueberry Festival which we attended at the Windy Acres Farm in Geneva Sunday afternoon. The Festival was an immersive experience, as festivals must be. Present at a festival, once more I am reminded that I am not alone. Others are raising families, introducing children to the…
Perhaps you remember April 30, 1975, when NVA tanks rolled through the gates of the Presidential palace in Saigon? I was twenty six years old then. I still carry my draft card from that era in my wallet. That offensive put an end to our attempt to make Vietnam a client state, a colony…
A return home after days of absence is a special feeling. The conviction arises, “this is where I belong.” Is that familiar touch of place and of presence in time, — what is meant by “the hand of fate?” All of my experiences, the places, faces, and events have brought me to this place. …
We return home from Minnesota today. Our visit with family was a satisfying relief from the restriction on travel which has prevented contact and face to face conversation for the past year and a half. It is a delight to witness children playing and growing, maturing in interests, and capabilities. I was intellectually stimulated…
I moved. Today at breakfast I moved as far as possible from the droning of Good Morning America television, a mindless going on about how the quiz show Jeopardy. The show now will have two hosts… Who in his/her right mind should care? Clearly inhabitants of our media culture do care. The world is burning! …
Organisms soldier on unwittingly. The difference between how things seem and how things really are is just as fatal a gap for them as it can be for us, but they are largely oblivious to it. The recognition of the difference between appearance and reality is a human discovery. False belief = getting it…
Willmar, Minnesota. Years have passed since visiting with relatives here. Willmar, a great plains town is a center for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. Driving into Willmar, you are unlikely to miss the switching yard for the freight bearing trains bound for Chicago, or for the Pacific coast. Willmar is home to the…
