Sunday, January 3, 2021. A new year begins tomorrow, Monday is the first work-day of the week, — the beginning of ordinary time. We are exhausted psychologically by the severing of social exchange imposed by the pandemic. The worst is yet to come. Many have been ambivalent to the required measures necessary to slowing…
A light snowfall last night. Everything is coated with white, beautiful and temporary. Life for human beings is a mix of good and evil, light and darkness if you will. We cannot speak directly about “good” or it’s opposite, evil. We use metaphor to describe what we mean. Plato’s allegory of the cave is…
I did not remain awake til midnight for the departure of the old year to celebrate the new. Just before turning in I glimpsed television images of the Times Square “celebration” in New York. The scene was outlandish, devoid of crowds, just the TV personalities outfitted as if attending a monster’s ball. The rhetoric…
This the final day of the year 2020. What does the future hold for us? And there is only us. The worst delusion is to imagine that my fate is not entwined with that of others. Each of us is individual, a paradox of sentiment and thought, one-of-a-kind in all of the world, indeed,…
What is the purpose of the cosmos? How could I possibly know? I am “on the inside” as are you. To know the purpose I’d need to be on the outside, – like a god. An overview of the vastness of space, innumerable suns and planets need be encompassed in order to “know” the…
Three more days remain in 2020. The year has been one of pandemic, and of the nation roiled by the incompetence of the Trump administration. I am offended by incompetence. A state of incompetence, the inability to carefully execute a task to completion is something expected of children. When adults are incompetent, especially when…
1. Across the United States, thousands of businesses have closed during the pandemic, but the demise of so many beloved hangouts cuts especially deep. They were local landmarks — watering holes, shops and haunts that weathered recessions and world wars, only to succumb to the economic ravages of the coronavirus. 2.The myth of a…
I lived in Japan when this song was released in 1969. A Canadian band, The Guess Who performed the tune, Laughing, which became the second of their three gold records. The lyrics are simple and brutal. Rare is the love song that is not a sad song. The patience, courage, and luck demanded by…
I am not sure when I learned to work. Learning how to work, is open ended, a quest that one pursues over the arc of years until one no longer has any curiosity, or the will to expend further energy. Work is the expenditure of energy in a focused fashion to achieve a more…
I have mixed thoughts about Christmas. Given that the story of Christmas happens to be about a working class couple, without adequate shelter, with responsibility to care for a new born child, — as long as my home is a “Christian” country that girdles the world with military bases, and has a military budget…
