Too much caffeine yesterday, I slept little last night. Today is another day. Like everyone else, a creature of habit, I begin my day with a cup of coffee. I know better, but here I am at Starbucks. Happened to hear this song playing on the radio: The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix. …
Superficially this is a love song. By chance it was offered by the playlist here at Starbucks at the time I was contemplating what to say about Charlie Gard. The tune is far from pop entertainment. To my ear it enters at an existential level, speaking to the essential need for human connection. Our…
Time for a musical interlude. “True” stories of life are veined with tragedy. Music is our “gift of the gods,” a respite from care. Whenever I hear this song I am haunted by the tune and lyric. The attraction between male and female gender is exciting and terrifying. Certainly hormones, the primal reproductive drive…
Sunday morning. Back to my routine life. Just yesterday I was in Eagle River Wisconsin, the north woods. It is a country inhabited by wild life as much as by people. Over the 6 hour drive north past Milwaukee and Madison the flat expanses of cultivated fields gave way to aspen and spruce forests. …
To think philosophically is to ponder the range of human experience, as well as the tremendous width and breadth of words that have been written to explore, and make sense of that experience. A moment of discovery for the adult fortunate enough to have any curiosity left—-happens when a connection appears between two experiences…
As a younger man I thought that Mother’s Day was a perfunctory holiday. It seemed a formal obligation with minimalist, relatively unstructured requirement to express appreciation to one’s mom, and to motherhood in general. As the years have passed, Mother’s day as grown in my estimation. Now I view it as a sacred time,…
Life continues apace, society adjusts, acclimates to the idiosyncratic dismissal of the FBI chief. This was a out-of-nowhere Surd for us Americans. We’ve not had anyone in the White House who assumed tyrannical powers, since the Civil War. Lincoln was accused of arrogation of power when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus. But…
The election results are in! The French people with the good sense of self preservation have stepped away from the brink, choosing to move ahead rather than back. The work of nurturing a great family, or a great society is a multi-generational project. There is much to overcome, debris of past mistakes which must…
The following quotations are from Sarah Sekula’s outstanding article TURTLE POWER Endangered species spawn on Florida beaches, USA TODAY. Sarasota county has the highest density of turtle nests on the Gulf Coast, with as many as 6,000 nests a year, while the east coast of Florida hosts as many as 40,000. Seeing hatchlings emerge…
Just felt like considering the message, or better, the zeitgeist of this song. I don’t usually mourn the passing of an actor, more than just making a mental note of their absence. With the passing of Patrick Swayze in 2009 it was different. I felt that an artist of rare ability, a dancer, had…
