Waking I took the measure of my blood sugar. 50 mg/dcl was quite low, a partial explanation for my mental fog. NPR reported the death of Anthony Bourdain at 61 years of age this morning. My sense of malaise deepened. Bourdain was a superb story teller, a man who appreciated the rapture of fine…
Doing philosophy is a revolutionary activity. In these times of discord, suspicion, verbal assault, and sometimes overt expression of hatred–anyone who disciplines him or herself to mindfully exercise reason, speaking and writing with clarity is a subversive. Nothing is more antithetical to the mayhem, the pandemonium of “warfare,” than thoughtful communication. A family member…
The following lines are taken from a Situationist website, a brief comment written in the aftermath of the Trump election. I offer these words for the truth they convey, not as an endorsement of the Situationist Revolutionary philosophy. The Situationist International was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals,…
Family is not limited to those related by blood. I understand that more deeply as the years pass. The circle may be wide to include friends whose stories intersect our own. Each child that is born and welcomed into the family circle is a reminder of the generosity of heart and congeniality of spirit…
Lately I’ve the privilege to witness the email exchange between two friends on the topic of The Second Amendment and gun ownership. The exchange has been passionate, and to my sense, contentious at times. Yet, the topic represents a nexus of the present state of our society since firearms are a prominent aspect of…
Friday is typically conceived as the end of the work week. The truth is, one’s work never ends. To be alive is to work. We make these conventional assumptions, arbitrary lines. They are illusory and evaporate under the pressure of reality. What we think is reality gets in the way of reality. So here…
While living in the suburbs I seldom go into Chicago. Every place in northern Illinois is within the orbit of the city, one of the most populous in the country with 9.5 million people. The scale of the city causes discomfort. I have a sensation of 360 degrees of thinly veiled chaos when I…
Life is a matter of values. The thrust of one’s life is a matter of one’s aims. Purposes which one has chosen together, constitute the meaning of an individual’s life. Each has the opportunity to choose, to endorse the path that he or she takes. A few of the options offered by our post-industrial,…
We attended a Memorial Day ceremony in Beach Park. I did my best to enjoy it. It always seems tragically sad to remember those who died prematurely in unnecessary wars. I consider the Vietnam War and all of those since, including those underway,–unnecessary. To disregard the evidence of your own senses, and to believe…
Saturday was dedicated to putting in the garden. The patch of ground was broken a few times with the assist of a power tiller. I was grateful for the powered help. A neighbor who owns a horse farm was kind to allow me to obtain a sufficient quantity of barn manure for fertilizer. The…
