Zhuangzi was once fishingin the Po river when the ruler of Chusent two ministers with a message,“I wish to trouble youwith the charge of all territories.’ Zhuangzi continued to hold to hold the rodand without looking around said,“I have heard that in Chuthere is a sacred tortoisewhich died three thousand years ago.The ruler keeps…
Sunday, the sun is brilliant and the air cool. Fall. The seasons are reliable, delivering the rhythmic weather essential to the community life here in the Midwest. You might guess that my subtext, about which I struggle to write, — the political upheaval, the social unrest that troubles Chicago and our suburbs. The advent…
My love affair with drag racing reaches back in time to my sixteen year old self. A visit to Great Lakes Drag-a-way in Union Grove Wisconsin comes with sensation of connection. Just inside the gate in the distance is the shutdown area for the quarter mile race track. Before my vehicle is parked I…
Back at last. Ten days in France became twelve. The airline cancelled our return flight. The lesson was learned which I suppose all seasoned travelers know. When reservations are upended by circumstance one thing alone matters, – to hash out the details of an alternate flight yourself. The airline is unlikely to independently reschedule…
Travel in a foreign country asks the traveler to adapt. Humans can be very adaptive. Or frozen, by patterns of past experience, those impossible expectations paralyzing the mind, and then spinning like a top, after energy is spent, wobbling to fall over. It is Sunday morning, I compose these lines at the end of…
The day three, another outstanding breakfast at our hotel. The French feature of flakey, buttery pastry and fresh fruit, plus a charcuterie board is impossible to beat by my breakfast standards. My standard of what makes a good breakfast has been elevated. Today is Sunday. We arrived at the church of Saint Augustin, where…
This is to be our second day in Paris. I have a strange sensation of being in a country, and a city that in my fathers time suffered four long years of German occupation. I cannot exactly describe the feeling of walking along the Seine yesterday afternoon, the air filled with the sounds of…
Sunday morning, and it is Father’s Day. I feel puzzlement each year when Father’s Day arrives. What a mother does is something that is easy to feel. Is that Illusion? I am no female. And if I were, would I be up to giving birth? Is everything simply one more delusion, another fantastic and…
According to legend, Helen of Troy was ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’… I have no idea whether Homer’s Iliad reflects actual events, or whether it is a tribute to the mind of a brilliant story-teller. The tale of a prolonged conflict between the Greeks and a city state is profoundly human, psychologically…
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies. I am still a scholar to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. They are innocent, even in their wickedness. But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so it is…
