Monday brings the prospect of rain. Weeks without precipitation and the grass is dormant, the shrubs appear thirsty and dull at the end of a growing season. Some trees are shedding leaves, without any retrograde movement of temperature thus far. Does anyone pray for rain? I know that my grandfather did. Granddad owned a…
I felt ambivalence. Not being a connoisseur of antique automobiles why would I desire the press of congestion at the Geneva Concours d’Elegance? Contemplating vintage vehicles on the flat screen in the course of a television historical drama is enough for me. On the other hand, the event was free… As you would guess…
Sunday, late summertime is fine here. Sunshine, the beds of flowers display a riot of life and colors. But not so everywhere. In the aftermath of the Maui wildfires the death toll stands at 93 so far. Did anyone think a tropical paradise could be vulnerable to wildfires? Neighborhoods wiped out, now become skeletal…
Today will be another sweltering day. Heat and stifling humidity. One adapts to conditions as one is able, constraints presented by the thermal energy-surge of atmosphere, of ocean currents, a result of millennia of sequestered carbon release since the advent of the industrial age. The “waste” must go somewhere… Wouldn’t you agree? You cannot…
Thursday dawns with a hazy sky, hundreds of wildfires burn in the Canadian north. Since we all share a single planet New York City, the eastern seaboard of the United States is choked with unhealthy levels of smoke. For New York’s citizens it is unhealthy to be outside. Are we about to change our…
Returned from a wedding in Michigan. We received the invitation from a couple on my wife’s side of our family. No two weddings are alike. Two family groups are brought together in celebration of a beginning of life-together for two adults who have been recipients of parent’s devotion. The endeavor of parents to enable…
Do we pray anymore? Piety is obsolete in a secular society. Not entirely of course. Always there are remote places that have yet to hear the news. News takes time. “God is dead,” Nietzsche proclaimed as in the “Gay Science” published 1882. A way of life predicated upon reliance upon the technology of the…
Another satisfying morning at Starbucks. Often do I fail to notice how good life can be, just how lucky (another way of putting it) to be seated here with a cup of coffee in hand, conversing with a friend? Friendship is inestimable, a practice of presence, the exchange of words which reciprocally enlighten… The…
Joliet is a town, a small river town west of Chicago. In 1673, Louis Jolliet, along with Father Jacques Marquette, paddled up the Des Plaines River. The name reminds one of the history, what I mean is the indigenous people who once lived here, the Illinois native Americans, and the European French explorer for…
You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price…
