Did you play ‘pretend’, when you were about five or six years old? I did. What if a large majority of voters succumb to anti-immigrant, populist propaganda and decide to close the borders make life more difficult for those already inside the country….. and what if in such a country the voters, despite such…
After out patient surgery earlier in the day our daughter was resting. She chose The Matrix film as entertainment. We waited for the medication to arrive from Walgreens and refreshed our memories of this great film from 1999. There are many lines of dialog from the characters Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity that are as…
Waiting, patient waiting to hear one’s name called. One waits until one “hears….” When one hears his/her name called by the great leader, one bows in submission, in servile obedience to whatever the great man directs one to do, to become. One feels defined, given solidity, substantive being in response to the sound of…
So, you’d like to be a writer? Start keeping a journal. Everyday write something. Even if, and especially if it’s raw, words that can’t be polished, that take heroic effort to release and get down on the page. No matter how disjointed, incoherent, unappealing your emotional storms may be, –do your best to find…
Cold and snowy this morning, traffic “moved” like molasses…pondering what to write. With only forty five minutes to work with there will be no philosophical foray into the nature of knowledge, or to say it plainly “why it is that we are such fools.” A song played on the car radio, I’ve heard many…
This morning there’s little in mind. A lingering memory from yesterday; the image of a Republican lawyer at the impeachment hearings in Washington. The man speaking to a struck-dumb, packed hearing room said the president had nothing in mind, no intention, when he had the phone conversation with the President of Ukraine, Zelinsky. The…
Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from our oldest daughter. She was driving to the Central Dupage Hospital ER to request a CAT scan in order to better diagnose a possible hernia. I have had three hernia surgeries. I’ve experienced how painful a tear in the abdominal muscle wall can be. The…
On Borders by Yevgeny Yevtushenko In every border postthere is something insecure.Each one of themis longing for leaves and for flowers.They saythe greatest punishment for a treeis to become a border post.The birds that pause to reston border postscan’t figure outwhat kind of trees they’ve landed on.I supposethat at first, it was people who…
…in his or her own way of course. As you’d expect, I continue to read Slavoj Zizek — with more care the second time around. The European intellectual wrestles with the problem that confounds me: how to address a virulent ethnic hatred that matastasizes as a ravenous cancer in our society. Our President and…
This morning as I opened my browser, this graphic caught my eye. I felt compelled to read the story. The image is of Mount Everest. I have never been a rock climber and I am well past the age to consider climbing a mountain. I thought it common knowledge the Everest was the severest…
