A postscript to the observations about Amazon. I am a Amazon customer. I buy books on a regular basis and Amazon is convenient, affordable, etc. Often a book is available that perhaps I’d find otherwise with a great deal of effort. I have a good friend who works for Amazon. His account of the…
It is tempting to believe that Nature is eternal, subsisting impervious to the erosion of time. A temptation, an illusion, one immature mistake made when we extract “resources” and increase the heat load to the atmosphere and to the oceans. Thus we give a collective shove-of-the-wheel toward global warming and climate change catastrophe. Whenever…
I was a participant in a rollicking discussion on the topic of determinism and free will earlier in the week. The topic is an ancient philosophical conundrum how the appearance of choice, true freedom can be real, given that cause and effect are seamless. That cause and effect are inviolate is the underlying premise…
Stepping away from the chatter is not easy. I ask, “are we addicted to information?” It comes cascading at a rapid rate, at best understood partially, without enough context, — via iphone, TV, laptop screen… One byte after another edited for our approval, or said clearly, for “consumption.” After sitting down to breakfast I…
Today is June 1st. June is the month of summer. Summer arrives in few days. Summer is prime time for plants, animals and all living things. Growth is at maximum velocity over the arc of June and the following two months. In the northern hemisphere, the tilt of the earth’s axis places us closer…
And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you want to be thereAnd she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China… And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowersThere are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morningThey are…
Yesterday, a sunny Saturday on Memorial Day weekend. It’s uncertain that warm weather reaches the Midwest by late May. The weather is often “ify,” that is rainy, borderline cold, unpleasant. In the past a number of planned outings to Great Lakes Drag-a-Way on Memorial Day weekend were disappointed due to weather. Misery for me…
“Humanity’s pasthas been relatively brief:some 300,000 years as a species,a few thousand years of civilization.Its potential future, by contrast,could extend for billions of years,encompassing many trillions of sentient, rational beingsyet to be born.” The future – the adulthood of humanityis now in jeopardy. “If our species does destroy itself,”wrote Orville Schell, “it will bea…
Yesterday afternoon was spent at the Don Early Park in West Chicago. The park is tucked in beside and behind the cemetery right on East Washington Street. The feature of the park is a small pond. I would estimate the pond is about 50 yards or so in diameter. The pond is home to…
Yesterday was a day of wind and showers. These days of mid spring are fleeting and I did not want to delay taking pictures of flowers that I noticed in the neighborhood. I did my best given the wind to capture pictures of blooms along a white picket fence around the yard next door. …
