We Americans are “stuck in a ditch”, “out of gas”, “can’t find the keys.” Use any metaphor that comes to mind to describe an impasse. The automobile, “the invention” of the 20th century, is the indispensable means of transportation. How many idioms do we have to express the helpless feeling of being unable to…
It is Monday morning. I am in a hotel room in Springfield Missouri. Unaccountably I slept well last night. There is much to subvert a good night’s sleep, the bits and pieces of “the news” that one would rather not think about. Often the knowledge of things I would rather not say out loud,…
That Madman Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: “I am looking for God! I am looking for God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have…
It is Thursday. A morning sun shines in brilliance. Nature is awakens ! I can feel it. If you are a church-going person, today would be Maundy Thursday, a commemoration of the “last supper.” Perhaps you remember the painting by Leonardo da Vinci? How ironic that an aspect of that final week, was a…
I have never been a Led Zeppelin fan. Taste in music, taste in art has nothing to do with reason. It comes down to serendipity, the genre’s of music that one is exposed to by accident of your time and place in this world. That’s all. There’s no independent baseline of measure, when it…
I watched the Grammy’s Award Show. I am an “old guy” so I knew in advance most of the show content would be barely understood. Music is the voice of a generation. Several generations and more have come into being since mine was up and coming. The Boomer generation was the one born right…
This morning’s New York Times report on the war in Ukraine is a meditation upon the logic of war. “Stand with you, period” President Biden, in a passionate speech from Warsaw on Saturday, proclaimed the West’s complete support for Ukraine. “We stand with you, period,” Biden said. “Not doing enough” The next day, Ukraine’s…
The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go. He nudged us toward the thousands of battered cars preparing to leave Mariupol. The deaths came fast. On Feb. 27, we watched as a doctor tried to save a little girl hit by shrapnel….
It is Friday morning. After rising, switching on the iphone, a text message was waiting. A friend asked if I could meet him at Limestone Coffee Shop at 7. I had ten minutes. I pressed ahead with the bowl of cheerios, grabbed my coat and was out the door. Arriving at the coffee shop…
Mariupol They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. A man covered in a bright blue tarp, weighed down by stones at the crumbling curb. A woman wrapped in a red and gold bedsheet, her legs neatly bound at the ankles with a scrap…
