Decided to visit Galena Illinois for the weekend. Galena is close by the Mississippi River and and is known for it’s most famous resident, General Ulysses S Grant. Grant lived in Galena at the conclusion of the War Between The States. Galena has a Main Street, looking to be at least a half mile,…
Natural disasters are not as bad As not knowing what is enough. Loss is not as bad As wanting more. –Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching 46
Yesterday I was reminded of the fragility of language. Words are spontaneously used, transparent, selected for a purpose almost by reflex. As a man working on a motor instinctively reaches into his tool tray for the 3/8 inch socket because he “just knows” that’s the one that fits–so we chose our words, you and…
“If we live through this precarious moment, if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn’t lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader for. …He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is. The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish…
It is possible to act well in spite of one’s difficulties and apprehensions, a reserve of spiritual power becomes manifest, and may be accessed and drawn upon. The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” – which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching…
The more you love, the more you can love— and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had Time Enough, he could love all of the majority who are decent and just. –Robert A. Heinlein The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Its Monday morning. The day after the Super Bowl, and feeling blue. There is good-natured banter between staff here at Starbucks. Awareness of the chatter, and the David Bowie lyric in the background, “We can be Hero’s for just one day…” is pulling my spirit toward the bright side. Certainly my funk is the…
People claim to want freedom. In good faith attempts are made to set up political freedom. People also proclaim metaphysical freedom. They struggle to free slaves. They make liberty a supreme value. The loss of freedom by imprisonment is a punishment that is hard to bear. Liberty is cherished……. It is not true that…
At a bar sipping a wheat beer, I had time to consider something I wrote down twenty years ago. Words in the old note book seemed more truthful, more penetrating than when discovered long ago. I was younger, a different man then. Now, I hope I’m wiser, and more focused upon my one life….
Published in the LA Times, January 8, 2017 The following is a transcript of Meryl Streep’s speech at the 74th Golden Globes as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. I love you all. You have to forgive me, I have lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend and…
