Saturday, Memorial Day weekend. This is a strange beginning to summer, a season feeling “out of time,” something unlike any beginning of summer that I’ve experienced. This is the aftermath of the self quarantine-social-distancing for the past two months or so that has been necessary to slow the advance of the covid-19 virus. The…
Yesterday, I departed the house for my doctors office to keep my quarterly checkup appointment. Motivated by the insistence of the insurance company that I be seen by my Doctor quarterly, I decided to keep the appointment. I have risk on both sides, indeterminate health risk by moving around in public areas, and financial…
Since the beginning of civilization religion has been a mainstay for humanity to get through life. That is, until recently. More is to be said about the decline of traditional religion in our day to day lives. In our world reason is ascendant. We look to our own resources of knowledge, the methodology of…
The morning is magnificent. A strong sun bathes everything with life-giving light. Delicate vine plants, promising to blossom throughout the summer months ascend to the trellis, with perceptible growth by the day. In company with my daughter I visited Home Depot yesterday. Our mission was to purchase some plants, and to buy the foundation…
The truth of a grape hyacinth exceeds that of a man who *fabulates daily, foisting sociopathic reality upon all who need a cause, or have something to gain, or who are just lost in the kaleidoscopic zeitgeist of endless marketing. I arrived at this conclusion, peering through the lens of my camera on a…
It is raining outside. A gray day, but timely for the spring vegetation. Nature is more reliable than human nature. I say “more” because there are interruptions in natural processes, sometimes severe ones such as the little ice age (1303-1860) which brought cold and wet summers, failed crops and famine to Europe. Human nature…
The essay was entitled Against Cheerfulness, written by a female philosopher, Mariana Alessandri. Only a female would have the fortitude to mount an assault upon the Boy Scout code. Often it is from the outside that one is able to see more clearly. Especially an attack that illuminates the fault line between the admonition…
Quarantine imposes a discipline. One has time to attend to important, the most important tasks, which otherwise we have put off because we were so busy, our schedule so full. Now, there is no schedule. I have in mind the salutary duty of taking stock, of a backward look to see where one has…
After finishing Albert Camus’s work, The Plague, I returned to the text to mark several sections of singular philosophical statement. The segment chosen this morning is relevant to consideration of our post-covid-19 return to “normality”, the start-up of the economy. It is unclear what economy will be possible. Capitalist economies are marketplaces designed for…
Thursday, another day in a week of quarantine. The days run together. I am bereft of the normal routine of work that structures our sense of time. There is more mulch to be moved, to spread around the yard. The mind’s focus necessarily is restricted to the boundaries of one’s own house. There’s nowhere…
