In naturethe rule is not the state of distressit is superfluity, prodigality,even to the point of absurdity. The struggle for existence is only an exception,a temporary restriction of the will of life.The struggle, great and small,everywhere turns on ascendancy, on growth and extension,–in accordance with the will to powerwhich is the will of life….
Sunday dawns as one more day. This day is incomparable, a day only superficially similar to any other. We Americans have designated the seventh day Sunday, as a day of rest, reflection. To say it in a degraded form, “the Lord’s day,” a day for collective worship. Degraded you say!? Yes. Do not feel…
Today is my birthday. It is early but already several have greeted me with, “happy birthday.” As an adult it has been difficult to dwell on my birthday. “Happy Birthday…” Really!? A pure happiness is not of this world. I am here after 75 years, an astonishing, lucky win. After all the odds of…
The Sunday of the time change, the switch to daylight ‘savings’ time. Is anything at all ‘saved’? Describe for me how shifting the imposed grid of punctuated time, industrial time, upon the flow of natural-seasonal time is useful? Disruptive yes. Worth it? Why keep doing, in lock step what we’ve always done? I glimpsed…
Japanese: Oshōgatsu is the festival of year’s end and of a new beginning. The holiday is celebrated by gathering with family and friends to eat traditional foods. The feasting is typically preceded by the visit to a local temple where at the stroke of midnight one offers a coin to the deity. The temple…
Sunday morning is dark by cloud cover. The asphalt intersection at State and 3rd is a gray sheen with last night’s rain. On my way this morning I captured a photograph of the Christmas display in front of the old courthouse. An old maple, regal in summer, the bare branches now framing strings of…
St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, St. Nick is a Saint that continues to have a defined function. Not being raised Catholic, praying to any saint strikes me as strange, an out of sync movement in the symphony of survival. On the other hand perhaps my secular point of view is out of tune. I cannot…
December is upon us. Very soon, all will be involved in a schedule of holiday festivities. The merriment begins the day after Thanksgiving. On Sunday Batavia hosted our tree-lighting ceremony, with a band playing holiday tunes, our Mayor recognizing the high school coaching staff and achievement of the football team, then Santa arrived, transported…
Saturday afternoon was spent in the yard mulching fallen leaves. Mulching is good work. The leaves are prepared for decay, a return to humus, bedding for future generations of trees. Does life have an absolute beginning, and a final end? Where is a line of separation between what is living, and the process of…
There’s something menacing, darkly beautiful about the sound and sight of a drag car slowly rolling toward the staging beam. A big-inch motor idles, breathing heavily for air, the undulating bass note of a machine conceived, purpose-built for gobs of power, parts assembled for total acceleration. After staging, when the tree flashes green, pedal…
