Every occasion for whatever passes beyond the nonpresent and goes forward into presencing is poiesis, bringing forth. —excerpt Symposium (205b) by Plato Last night we met friends for dinner at The Green Door, a restaurant in Libertyville. A first visit to any smallish, bar-bistro on a Saturday evening is an adventure. There is the…
An early memory of my childhood was my beloved hatchet. I remember the heft of the sharpened blade in my hands— which lead to many adventures, and problem solving lessons. In the woods, which were in close proximity to my house, I chopped down small pine trees, and used the limbs to build shady…
The idea came that I could risk to write about women. Writing about women as a man, especially when read by women is certain to provoke push-back. Men never get away with opining about women unless they are speaking to men. Within Nietzsche’s work Thus Spake Zarathustra, is a meditation entitled, Old and Young…
Thursday morning, another single-digit day of winter cold. The first day of spring is just a few days away,–March 20th. Surreal! No more surreal than the early broadcast of today’s news on NPR. The much ballyhooed summit with the North Koreans reached a swift end with absolutely nothing achieved. Imagine asking the North Koreans…
As it often is, the discussion last night among our group was engaging, for an hour and a half. Over a dozen adults enjoyed a wide-ranging exchange of ideas prompted by a thought experiment proposed many years ago by Edwin Schrodinger. The concept is known by the moniker, Schrodinger’s Cat. The set up is…
Awakened this morning in a foul mood. Can’t blame the low blood sugar because breakfast didn’t help my attitude. I attempted listening to NPR, feeling more troubled, enraged by an interview with an elected member of Congress from Oklahoma. The man smug and self-righteous, asserted that he would cast his vote to support the…
I received a note from a friend yesterday. He expressed a cautionary word about my interest in reading Nietzsche, about sliding from a productive skepticism into a grim cynicism. Nietzsche is not everyone’s cup of tea. His writings skirt the edge of madness. In the final months of his life he did suffer from…
Yesterday I listened to an interview with Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend Indiana. He is 37 years old, served a tour in Afghanistan, is a Rhodes scholar and is running for President. He won his 2nd term of Mayor with 80% of the vote. Mayor Pete comes across as likeable. His self confidence…
What child would not have cause to weep over its parents? Worthy I deemed this man and ripe for the sense of the earth; but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a house for the senseless….. This one went out like a hero in quests for truths, and eventually he…
There is only one world, and this is false, cruel, and contradictory, seductive, without meaning— A world thus constituted is the real world. We have need of lies in order to conquer this reality, this “truth,” that is in order to live. –excerpt The Birth of Tragedy Friedrich Nietzsche Can’t shake this brief quotation. …
