Silly me. Why should I write about this song? Perhaps an ironic silliness is my hold upon sanity? Never mind. In our discussion session on Buddhist philosophy, we mused together about the few possessions owned by those most intent upon practicing the prescripts of the Buddha’s message. A monk owns a saffron robe or…
Why Buddhism? We began several sessions to consider concepts entailed in Buddhism; not easy or comfortable for Americans who are natural pragmatists. Habits of thinking by categorizing, labeling experience is our default. Buddhist thought is a bid to move in another direction: reality as seamless, metaphysical monism. There is no purity or pollution, birth…
I have the website for The Leo bookmarked. The Leo is an independent, “alternative” newspaper published in Louisville, Kentucky. The editorial slant is unapologetic and progressive. The coverage of culture and local happenings is extensive and well written. I’ve visited Louisville a number of times and find the town on the Ohio river stimulating. …
Photography has been an interest for many years. In high school I began taking my fathers Kodak box camera to the drag strip. Imagine using a camera with a 1/30th second shutter speed and 100 ASA film to record the accelerating launch of a dragster. My first lesson: a photograph depends essentially upon the…
A friend sent me a link to an article by Ed Yong, staff writer at The Atlantic. The article by a science writer was an overview of America’s response to the pandemic; America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral. The article was nine pages of emotionally difficult reading. I felt a sense of terror,…
Waking this morning there is drizzle outside. Weather extremes are devastating, and I am thankful, the proportion of sunlit days and to those with rain seems normal here so far. Too much heat and vegetation becomes fuel. Too much water, and flooding is the consequence. Technology, or to say it more plainly, the application…
To stay cheerful in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if high spirits has no part in it. Excess strength alone is the proof of strength. A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black,…
Thursday morning, One of my ancestors might have been a common foot-soldier in service of some Medieval nobleman. In my imagination I am back in time, re-living his life, standing in place on a castle wall. The crossbow is heavy. I look over the countryside from the high vantage point to see the tents…
57 In every healthy society, three mutually conditioning physiological types separate out and gravitate in different directions, each one having its own hygiene, its own area of work, its own feelings of perfection and field of mastery. Nature, …, separates out predominantly spiritual people from people characterized by muscular and temperamental strength from a…
Sitting under the maple tree, in front of the old Kane County courthouse built in 1892, it has the architectural look and feel of another time. Many that constructed the edifice remembered the War Between the States, and likely served in the Grand Army of the Republic. That explains the impressive sculpture, imposing, on…
