Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from our oldest daughter. She was driving to the Central Dupage Hospital ER to request a CAT scan in order to better diagnose a possible hernia. I have had three hernia surgeries. I’ve experienced how painful a tear in the abdominal muscle wall can be. The…
Incantation By Czeslaw Milosz Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie…
Mary Oliver has died. She was eighty three. I have a number of her books of poetry. Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your…
The source of this list has been lost. I cannot give attribution. I know that I am not the one who compiled these words. I think it is an act of resistance to share them in this era of disharmony, of unrestrained ego, of the illusion that conflict has a worthwhile outcome. Leadership demands…
Trump Stands with Saudis over Murder of Khashoggi By Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard Nov. 20, 2018 WASHINGTON — President Trump has long viewed foreign policy as a series of business deals, stripped of values and idealism. But his 633-word statement on Tuesday about the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi showed…
In the parking lot of Mercy Hospital, and inside of the building four people were killed yesterday. Yesterday twelve people were killed in a California country music bar. The slaughter continues in our armed-up society. Wouldn’t think of giving up our guns. In fact we have the right to carry them around with us…
On Receiving the First News of the War by Issac Rosenberg Snow is a strange white word; No ice or frost Has asked of bud or bird For Winter’s cost. Yet ice and frost and snow From earth to sky This Summer land doth know; No man knows why. In all men’s hearts it…
I was a sophomore in high school. That winter a neighborhood acquaintance, James House, who was perhaps a year older than I, turned up driving a new 1965 2+2 mustang. The car was a fastback, dark blue with a broad double white racing strip from bumper to bumper. The motor was a 289 cubic…
I received email messages from two friends this morning. They registered a complaint to a statement which I made yesterday. I criticized Capitalism as practiced by Big Pharma as being predatory, pitiless. I am an insulin dependent diabetic. Not only is the cost of insulin very expensive, the pricing of many prescription medications has…
The last few hours were eventful with travel, rental car return, receipt of boarding pass, TSA check in, and then boarding for the two hour flight to Chicago. Nothing outside of normal expectations. That is how life sometimes is, except when it isn’t. I am sad for my sister two years younger than I. …
