Yesterday was a good day. Choosing to revisit the Dick Young Forest Preserve in Batavia, when I arrived my vehicle was the the only one in the parking lot. Following the path to Nelson Lake Marsh I grew comfortable with the solitude. My company was the wind, the brown vegetation, and tender new growth invisibly…
The first spring rain produced about an inch of rainfall. An inch is a good beginning. With another day of gentle rain, we will be off the starting-line of growing season. It sounds strange to say “we.” By habit we think of homo sapiens as distinct, abstract, essentially different from nature. That is a…
Can I, should I take a break in writing about the defense of Ukraine? Yes and no… Life is many things. Even in war there are interludes in assault, in the effort to destroy and kill. Especially in abject misery, in ravening terror — a pause is useful to recognize, to feel gratitude that…
Writing about the death of someone I did not know, I took a short walk in the snowfall to think. There’s a purity about snow. I remembered white symbolizes death in Japan. Purity is erasure, a blank slate. Death is erasure of the filigreed world, that Baroque montage of shape, color and sound, the…
Snow continues to fall. I, the creature of habit, fetched my usual cup of coffee from Starbucks, despite the slippery roads. I returned safely. Perhaps I was a little lucky. No accident and here I am. One has to be somewhere, as long as one is alive. I’d rather be in Batavia, Illinois than…
There is in all things a patternthat is part of our universe.It has symmetry, elegance, and grace–these qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find itin the turning of the seasons,in the way the sand trails along a ridge…We try to capture these patternsin our lives and in…
Christmas day is different for each of us. One day of the year is laden with so many expectations. Some of those expectations are impossible, even if we understand them with better clarity. When I pause to consider, the hopes, the trepidation which a parent invests in a child, — as the years spool…
Soon, very soon the two year old in the house will awaken. Will she remember it is Christmas morning? This is the time! It is a point in time when she will begin to learn what the myth, what the tradition, what the practice of Christmas means. The meaning of Christmas cannot be reduced…
Are there not many ways to think about, well everything? Certainly! Who would disagree. Several days ago, I posted a reflection about Christmas that was about change, about illusion, and about “reality.” At the time I wanted to tell a post-modern story of an event that has occurred for over two millennia. Early today when…
What is beautifulis the object in its drapery,under its veil, in its hideout. …The task of art criticism is notto lift the veil but rather,through the most precise knowledge of itas a veil, to raise itself for the first timeto the true view of the beautiful. …The only way to view beautyas a secretis…
