My writing since the election of our president has disclosed my state of mind, that we are on the cusp of destruction. Time will tell. Nevertheless one must live one day at a time. Living in premonition of the apocalypse is no life at all. It’s a stuttering distraction from the path that one…
Earlier in my life, I lived day-to-day with little awareness of, scarce concern about the occupant of the White House. Lately, I really miss President Obama. He exhibited probity and propriety for eight years, in the teeth of stiff opposition. He observed that the cost of health care for a majority of Americans was…
Last night after dusk I saw the planet Venus suspended, a glowing large star, behind the silhouette of the tall maple in the distance. I felt the comfort of knowing that Venus remains for me, as it did for my father, my grandfather, and for so many past generations. The enjoyment of that glimpse…
Yesterday I was reminded of the fragility of language. Words are spontaneously used, transparent, selected for a purpose almost by reflex. As a man working on a motor instinctively reaches into his tool tray for the 3/8 inch socket because he “just knows” that’s the one that fits–so we chose our words, you and…
Yesterday a friend sent a link to The Atlantic article featuring the winners of the 2017 World Press Photo Contest. This photo rocked my world, –that is the world of connections, coherency, the lucidity that my mind has fashioned from my 67 years of life experience. The photo is of a female, holding a…
VII This, then, is to be the way? Freedom’s candle will be snuffed out by freedom’s sworn defenders, chanting hourly the praise of freedom. Their praise will console the free waking in their prisons when the Bill of Rights has at last dissolved in the indifference of the great Self of force. When the…
Another restless night battling this sinus infection. Slept fitfully in the TV room. My condition was not the only thing troubling me. I thought of my co workers, especially the news of a yet to be diagnosed heart condition of one of the men. He is much younger than I. I also could not…
“If we live through this precarious moment, if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn’t lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader for. …He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is. The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish…
Our culture idolizes youth. The images selected for commercial promotion are adults and children, in the bloom of health, active, energized by joie de vivre, apparently eternally young. The message directly voiced, or indirectly implied is the product under offer, is the secret to this well being. I wish that were true. Last night…
It is possible to act well in spite of one’s difficulties and apprehensions, a reserve of spiritual power becomes manifest, and may be accessed and drawn upon. The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” – which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching…
