Nicolaus Copernicus surmised that the earth rotated around in sun in about 1514, and no one killed him for thinking that. He lived another twenty-nine years and died at the age of seventy. Throughout those final twenty-nine years, his revolutionary description of outer space mostly seemed an unprovable thought experiment that had the ancillary…
Twenty four hours ago I was horribly ill. Four or five sessions of throwing up, and then came the fever. At some point the thought occurred to me, –so this is how we die. I did not dwell on the thought. The coming of dawn always makes everything better. I had several emails and…
Some years ago I spent a few days by the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state. In the course of the hiking expeditions, two things came to mind over and over. The immense beauty of the surroundings was indescribable. The physical sensation of hazard, of the lethal consequences of a lapse in judgment, was…
One Tin Soldier is a 1960’s era protest song written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. It was first recorded by the Canadian group The Original Castle in 1969. It was recorded in 1971 by The American group Coven and it reached number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was featured in the…
I am a North Carolinian, who immigrated to Chicago and adapted to life in one of the world’s great cities. Yet, the South has a place in my heart. Every visit to Louisville, Kentucky feels like home coming. Louisville is located on the Ohio River, a trade route since the West was settled in…
The road from Chicago to Louisville can seem longer than the five and a half hour drive the journey is supposed to take. Especially if you happen to run into a time-killing-slow-crawl traffic jam in the Chicago metro area. We’d been on the road for a while and were just past Indianapolis. Our joints…
Thursday evening is the regular meeting of the Baraboo Philosophy Discussion Group held at the Log Cabin Cafe. Here one of the participants expresses an opinion on Plato’s Parmenides. Okay, okay –the Discussion Group exists only in my imagination. The Log Cabin Restaurant in Baraboo Wisconsin is “real” though. The establishment is exceptional on…
Went for a walk on Sunday Oct 9th about 3PM in the afternoon. The wind was rustling the tall pines. I stood on the narrow spit of sand at the edge of the lake. The air was cool, giving hint of frost after sunset. A breeze lapped the lake surface; creating a big plate…
What we see comes from that which is not apparent. This statement is axiomatic for us, becoming embedded in the DNA of our culture since the rise of science as a basis for knowledge. Did it all began when Galileo pointed his 10x homemade refracting telescope at the moon, and discovered, saw with his…
Emanating from a cathedral the center of Rome, a line of ten thousand people stretches radially outward, like the hand of a giant clock, out to the edge of the city, and beyond. Yet these patient pilgrims are directed inward, not out. They are waiting their turn to enter the Temple of Time. They…
