We drove into the city last night. We planned to enjoy dinner with Ben and Jeff. Ben is nephew to my wife. I had not seen Ben in at least eight years. We walked the neighborhood to Crosby’s Kitchen on 3455 N. Southport for a leisurely meal. Stories were swapped while eating. We then…
I know this is early or late, depending on your perspective. The occupant of the White House was chosen person of the year 2016. I am getting a jump on the 2017 pick. With every new year, it’s a new contest. Nothing rules out anyone getting the nod. A past recipient may become a…
A gear-head since my high school days, I go out of my way to admire an old muscle car, or a race car. An early memory remains of standing outside the fence at the State Fair at Raleigh as the open wheeled dirt track midget cars screamed around the track. After the race I…
Sometimes you have to say it out loud in order for the truth to penetrate, to register, to enter the heart. If you are able, for whatever reason or rationalization, to support the president after Charlottesville and the pronouncement following several days later about the “good people” among the alt-right demonstrators,–you are a racist. …
Wow! What a discussion. There is nothing more ordinary than “reality” and nothing more controversial. When we seriously think about what we mean by “reality” we encounter levels, horizontal slices of a cake. Which slice is desired, pointed to—involves the vocabulary and the syntax that you must use to describe that segment of reality. …
Again the family celebrated Clara’s 89th birthday with a prime rib dinner. A dining room was filled with light and conversation. At one end a display of mounted musky, pike and walleye reminded us of our link to the north woods. Looking down upon our long table at the other end, a mounted trophy…
The lake and the woods make a scarcely perceptible sound. Maybe it’s the sound of the wind in the tall pines, spruce and aspen. No wind can been seen moving the surface of the still, mirror-like surface. There is life all around, and almost no sound. Most of the movement is behind the scene,…
Friday morning in Eagle River Wisconsin. The woods by the lake are serene. In the north woods life is expressed by shear being. I recall life in a busy Starbucks at this time of morning; the chatter of patrons describing morning drink orders to a barista who recognizes the payment collected by the swipe…
Glen Campbell passed on August 8th. I was never a fan but I heard his music played over the radio for many of my young adult years. When we lived in Durham Campbell was a patient at the Ear Nose and Throat hospital where my wife worked as a medical assistant. She rode in…
Can agency and determinism be combined? Helen Steward in her book A Metaphysics of Freedom asserts agency. Agency is the ability of a Subject to effect a physical change in the world apart from the limit of antecedent brain states. The position is that of incompatibilism. Agency and determinism are incompatible descriptions of human…
