A friend sent this poem to me. I’ve read it before. Since the first reading several years have passed. Now the words evoke a more personal reality, something that could be autobiographical. I guess that is the whole point. A discussion of politics last night was passionate, mindful, with good insights being exchanged. This…
Sutherland Springs, Texas, First Baptist Church, Devin Patrick Kelley, 15 magazines of AR-15 ammo, 15 rounds per mag, emptied into the congregation. Twenty six people are killed. Kelley is dead. I read these “facts” and more on the CNN website. The bottomless analysis of the event continues. Everyone who has an opinion weighs in,…
If we are going to be personally free and productive human beings we need to recover some kind of interest in the possibility of attaining a relatively human and civilized condition, in which we ourselves can find ourselves and help others do the same. And that we might even be able to communicate something…
“We acknowledge the receipt of your order for five triple furnaces including two electric elevators for raising the corpses and one emergency elevator..” –excerpt of letter from I A Topf and Sons, manufacturers of heating equipment to the commandant of Auschwitz concerning the new “heating system.” “…for putting the bodies into the furnace we…
Propaganda is an ostensible appeal to reason and to action which is in fact essentially irrational. We are all the more susceptible to its irrational appeal since we are subject to the same systematic irrationality in advertising. There is such a thing as a labyrinth of information; the information is truly abundant and complex,…
Thanks Dad !
Another morning. Its Wednesday and at least I am not in traffic on I-294 in the stampede to Chicago. Around 6AM yesterday before dawn I accelerated up the ramp into the stream of traffic with a massive chrome truck bumper in my rear view mirror. In the darkness the surreal stream of headlights, with…
A man of massive meditation
Is like a man looking at death,
Looking at death as at a bull’s –eye.
He watches before he crosses the tracks.
–Richard Eberhart
Life comes at us without warning. I cannot imagine what this day will bring. Yet I must “cross the tracks,” get on with the business of my life. I have my to-do list. There is the potential customer that I hope to see in Gurnee, and the meeting preparation to attend to later at my desk. This is what is meant by “the future.” Opportunity and risk are one and the same.
Strange the memories that present themselves in surprising detail. I remember falling in love with a Ford Mustang. It was 1965, my sophomore year in high school. An acquaintance who lived in the neighborhood was given a new Ford Mustang 2+2 fastback by his mother. It had a 289 ci motor and a four…
Though we have the power to destroy the whole world, life is stronger than the death instinct and love is stronger than hate. It does not make logical sense to be too hopeful, but once again this is not a matter of logic. One does not look for signs of hope in the newspapers…
