I took a nap on a summers afternoon, warm, bright with sunlight. I awakened noting that my blood sugar was high. A diabetic pays attention to such things. I decided to take a bike ride into town. The afternoon was quiet. A short ride would serve to address the high blood sugar. Riding for…
ON PHILOSOPHERS Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor…
Yesterday I walked in the woods. My last attempt to enter Braeburn Marsh I was met with a phalanx of mosquitoes. Outnumbered my determination crumbled, I hastily returned to the house. This summer day I walked along the edge of the marsh paying attention, quietly absorbing the late summer wild flowers. Many things that…
We return home from Minnesota today. Our visit with family was a satisfying relief from the restriction on travel which has prevented contact and face to face conversation for the past year and a half. It is a delight to witness children playing and growing, maturing in interests, and capabilities. I was intellectually stimulated…
I moved. Today at breakfast I moved as far as possible from the droning of Good Morning America television, a mindless going on about how the quiz show Jeopardy. The show now will have two hosts… Who in his/her right mind should care? Clearly inhabitants of our media culture do care. The world is burning! …
Organisms soldier on unwittingly. The difference between how things seem and how things really are is just as fatal a gap for them as it can be for us, but they are largely oblivious to it. The recognition of the difference between appearance and reality is a human discovery. False belief = getting it…
How beautiful indifference was in a world that was not indifferent, in a world that was different, convulsive and contradictory, with stakes and passions. Back then, the indifference of the mind could turn into a stake or a passion, in total opposition to the world. It could anticipate the indifferent future of…
Saturday morning is overcast in Eagle River. I anticipated writing from a coffee shop in town. I arrived and read a sign that said open 7 till 2PM Monday through Friday. Disappointed, I returned to the Best Western lobby. I settled into a chair at a corner table. Yesterday the manager of Inn described…
We are spending several days in Baraboo, Wisconsin. We plan to visit with relatives living in Eagle River Wisconsin, and then on to Willmar Minnesota, to see family that we’ve not seen for many months. For the most part our stay in Baraboo has been delightful. There have been bare glimpses of the ideological…
This morning I am processing the discussion of last night, an exchange of ideas within our amateur philosophers group about the work of Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend was Austrian. He taught philosophy at the University of California at Berkley for three decades. He passed in 1994. Attracted by Feyerabend’s anarchistic view of the methods of…
