Religion and politics are hot buttons. That has always been true. A long list of deadly conflicts could be composed without difficulty. Both of these topics are a “third rail.” Advice is widely known that these topics ought to be avoided in polite company. Would you solicit opinion about politics with relatives whom you…
Yesterday I enjoyed the rare privilege of lunch with a good friend at a restaurant which we both find delightful. We met at Taste of Paris in Mundelein. In the middle of the week, we had the dining room to ourselves. Under these conditions of increasing covid-19 contagion it felt safer to dine alone. …
Yesterday I found time to take a short bike ride along the river path to the North Aurora dam. The river is less swollen within its banks than my last visit some weeks ago to this spot. Just below the dam on the bank under a bit of shade I read more from America…
We had our philosophy discussion last night, six of us using one of the online video chat tools. The question of the evening: Is goodness natural? Certainly we could have wrestled with the definition of each of those terms. I have thought about this question in its many variants for years. The three words…
Nothing more need be said.
Culture: a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, — transmitted from generation to generation through learning. culture as widely defined A fact is that which from being an object of the intellect becomes a matter of conscience;…
Yesterday, there was a good deal of rain. I took a walk into Braeburn Marsh. The marshland floor was wet; the decomposition of wood fragments of the fallen giant cottonwoods was a visible example of the carbon cycle. Sunlight, to sugar by photosynthesis, to the cellulose wood fiber over time, becoming a 50 foot…
Arbery, remember that name. I am late to be aware of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. I overheard others in the household conversing about his death. The 25 year old was jogging through a neighborhood, when two armed men, a father and son, pursued him in a pickup. Arbery’s path was obstructed,…
Yesterday I finished a chapter in The Rebel by Albert Camus entitled The Regicides. Camus writes to detail the theoretical underpinning of the Jacobin Reign of Terror. All opponents of the uprising against Louis XVI, indeed those in favor of the idea of divine right of kings — were lead to the scaffold, put…
I subscribe to the New York Times Sunday edition. The diverse content, the quality of journalism and fine writing provide a weeks-worth of pleasurable reading. The Arts and Leisure section for Sunday the 12th (Easter) featured a piece entitled Searching for a Jesus Who Looks Like Me. The topic was the range of personal…
