An interlude is a time for reflection, a brief “time out” to recall what has been written in the playbook, and to conceive a plan of attack. Momentarily it will be “game on.” The wonderful words said at the inauguration ritual will be past — difficult, improvisational work will begin. One difficulty will be…
I met with two friends yesterday at St. James Farm Forest Preserve in Winfield for a walk in the woods. St. James Farm was originally a retreat of many decades for the McCormick family. Chauncey and Marion McCormick purchased the farm in 1920. He was the great nephew of Cyrus McCormick who invented the first…
Late in the day, dusk was giving way to darkness and traffic was becoming heavier. I felt relieved to hear the voice of Kai Ryssdal, the host of Marketplace on NPR radio. There hasn’t been much good news lately. I believe it is better to know, — to be “Socrates dissatisfied, than a pig…
As consciousness dawned this morning, from the clock radio came these sounds of exhortation: “It’s the Mackay-in-the-morning show at 95.9, The River… — followed by the harmonious voices, a choir singing acappella the Rolling Stones anthem You can’t always get what you want.” I rose and thought to myself, “How perfect.” What better battle…
The body politic twists, wracked from the clarity of what must be done, distended in a contrary direction by a customary shape-shifting accommodation. Thus the odds are long that a decisive, kill-stroke will be delivered to the personification of anti-truth that looms over us… Trump and his acolytes, either costumed and embellished with facial…
I awoke at 5:50AM a few minutes before the alarm would have aroused me from slumber. In the darkness my first thoughts were that Friday is a nice day, I have a fine vantage point to observe the demise of our democracy, our civil society. Two days in the aftermath of a failed coup,…
I awakened to the news that the Democrats appear to have won the Georgia runoffs. That means that control of the Senate passes from the Trump Party to the Democrats. The new Biden Administration stymied at every turn by a Republican controlled Senate would have been a nightmare four years in duration. For me…
I want to do things that I did when I was sixteen. I would spend hours walking in the woods, in any season. I carried a Mars Chocolate Bar in one pocket, my hunting knife on my belt, my 22 rifle in my hand, and a box of 50 shells in the other pocket. …
A light snowfall last night. Everything is coated with white, beautiful and temporary. Life for human beings is a mix of good and evil, light and darkness if you will. We cannot speak directly about “good” or it’s opposite, evil. We use metaphor to describe what we mean. Plato’s allegory of the cave is…
This the final day of the year 2020. What does the future hold for us? And there is only us. The worst delusion is to imagine that my fate is not entwined with that of others. Each of us is individual, a paradox of sentiment and thought, one-of-a-kind in all of the world, indeed,…
