Comment was made in the course of our discussion of the Iliad, of the great cultural differences in the late-bronze age status of women, and that of our own time, three millennia in the future. Consider the character of Briseis, taken and given as a spoil of war to Achilles consequent to the razing…
Rage! Menis! How much history, as though a blind fate, –is a story of rage and the aftermath. April 2, 1865 the Confederacy was essentially finished. After four years of war, the Union army entered Richmond while the city burned. A way of life based upon slavery, the blind determination to unjustly use human…
A more intimate opportunity for philosophical “play” is offered at Taste-of-Paris on Thursday evenings. The setting could not be more perfect. A few of us meet in the dining room, find a place at the round table, which is under the scaled down model of the Eiffel Tower. Two to five individuals, friends, a…
Stopped in at the local CVS yesterday to purchase a birthday card. Walking with purpose to the greeting card display against the back wall, I passed a solitary individual who was busy stocking shelves who said “hello.” In the big, quiet store I chose a card with a superhero graphic on the front. Making…
There have been many. Yesterday, I challenged myself to remember the names of as many of my elementary teachers as I could. I remembered most of them, in order, from the first to the eighth grade. A majority are remembered with affection and gratitude. They gave an emotionally lost kid the gift of their…
Monday after Easter. Back into the trenches of life. To call it problem solving is an understatement. Circumstances develop, life itself demands particular “solutions” –or things fall apart, or so it seems. Easter is a story, a compact microcosm of ideas and emotions, a miniature of life itself. Betrayal, trial, abandonment, suffering and the…
Easter, April 1st, and my birthday. The sun rises brilliant, warm, and smooth jazz is playing inside at Starbucks. Easter is the day by which we all celebrate our good fortune to be alive. And it’s sheer good fortune, our number came up in the lottery of Nature. Sometimes things happen which remind us…
Yesterday was Good Friday. I took a rare weekday off from the office. Since Jesus died inconveniently, ignominiously on a Friday, it seemed right to take the day to consider the way of his journey, and of mine. Do we not all die? Birth and death are momentous events that we all have in…
The day is overcast, air temperature at 34 degrees, no wind–as if Nature is at the fold point. Spring is soon to be felt, experienced, seen in the tender green shoots emerging from the black earth, seeking light, warmth, life. Life is a mystery, impervious to our intelligence. We describe it variously, but do…
What an evening at Starbucks! The long table at the end of the room was full. Over an hour and a half of impassioned exchange of ideas followed. The conversation was in the main about the “great chain of being” with a segue into Mandelbrot fractals, a demonstration of which we enjoyed from Gary’s…
