I am a fan of civilization. The comfort of this Starbucks, the soothing background music, the efficient and professional-polite barista, and this “just right” hot cup of delicious coffee, all appeal to me. Is this what is meant by civilized, polite society? I mean a society calibrated to ensure security and comfort for those…
Attempting to wrap my mind around this insight – I inwardly shiver. To become well educated in the contemporary sense means a grasp of cause and effect, of a mechanical notion of reality, that events, even occasions of unspeakable enormity, of power so destructive that ordinary words cannot serve, – are no longer divine…
A visit to the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market is something we look forward to. On the street between vendor stalls, I remember the excitement of childhood: the sky is blue, I hear the conversation and laughter of our Batavia neighbors. A majority of us work indoors. Is is not natural to be out of…
Didn’t post yesterday. Fall chores at home, then to the Batavia Farmer’s Market. A Farmer’s Market is a party, as well as an opportunity to participate in the life-sustaining exchange. Our human species prefers civilization. Civilization is wedded to infinite processes of soil, water, seed & plant, sun, atmosphere, every scintilla of which is…
Each day passes, election day is closer to us. Perhaps today I will fill out my mail-in ballot, and be satisfied that I have expressed my will for the texture of the future for all that live here, not just here, for the world. There is much that I wish were different about the…
Born To Run In the day, we sweat it out on the streetsOf a runaway American dreamAt night, we ride through mansions of gloryIn suicide machinesSprung from cages out on Highway 9Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the lineOh, baby this town rips the bones from your backIt’s a death trap, it’s…
This is what I thought: for the most banal event to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he[she] lives surrounded by his[her] stories, and stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him…
Saturday morning, a little time is left here at Starbucks. Less now, but enough. Drought assaulted shrubs in my yard need a drink. I feel the obligation. I’ll provide water until it rains tonight (or perhaps not). Weather reports are speculation even with the improved accuracy of late. That is all it is, which…
How do I begin? We are several days on the far side of Labor Day. In this election year, November 4th is coming up fast (like a sweeping curve at the end of a racetrack straightaway). We, that is fellow citizens, will soon cast a ballot to select the 47th president of the United…
These are severe, almost serrated words. The writer observes how profoundly we are marked, shaped by attitudes, habitual behaviors of our immediate, even of ancestors not proximate to our memory. I hardly knew my grandfather. Nevertheless what he loved lives and and is expressed in me. This endowment, a tendency for benefit or for…
