At last I have seen Beverly Hills. Visiting was not on my bucket list of places, but I have been aware for much of my life that movie stars and other entertainers live in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is storied for it’s luxurious shopping, for the glitz and glamor cultivated by those who are…
The journey continues. We’ve passed though much desert, and some high country with tall lodge pole pine trees. We are now in Kingman, Arizona. This is our third stop, visiting with individuals who have a long term interest, fascination with carousels, with the artistry and history of carousel animals. My host and guide, for…
Passing through Texas. Anticipate reaching New Mexico within a few more hours of driving. The panhandle of Texas seems as flat as a plate, dry in appearance by comparison to the Midwest. Many cows are viewed from the road, standing, heads down, finding such nourishment as they can. Do they know they will soon…
Saturday is bright and brisk. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. I, a refugee from Christianity find the unreality of Easter, that is a certain opinion about the Easter story excruciating. How so you naturally will ask… The pageantry, the spectacle made of the resurrection story by Christian churches directs me to believe because a mutilated…
Stoic Philosopher-Slave We met late in the day to discuss Stoicism, that is, the sayings of Epictetus, an excerpt from his “Manual.” Nine of us were around the table, a sell-out crowd. The discussion was spirited, wide ranging. There is no respite from the issues of our time, pressing upon us. Epictetus, a slave,…
There’s a gentle rain outside. Trees show signs of emerging leaf. Everything that I can see seems to be waiting. Waiting for what? Life is a procession, one thing after another. Cause and effect… ad infinitum. The mind imposes the notion of delay, waiting as a holiday parade, the marching band has to march…
Every single day is paradoxically heaven and hell. My grand daughter cannot experience life in such terms because she is somewhere in the middle of her effort to acquire language. I have no doubt that as years pass, with experience, reading, pursuit of scholarship, she will understand that unalloyed moments of joy flicker and…
Tomorrow will be my birthday. I am still here. In the course of asking myself, “how the hell did I reach this time and place,” I cannot answer in fine detail. I have to think that shear accident, more than my share of luck has figured into the fact that I am within reach…
My mood, my internal weather is as somber as the morning sky. The news from Ukraine is of widespread shelling of neighborhoods, of a mother wounded by shrapnel in the face, as she covers her child to protect it from death in the air. There is news of thousands of civilians removed from Mariupol,…
The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go. He nudged us toward the thousands of battered cars preparing to leave Mariupol. The deaths came fast. On Feb. 27, we watched as a doctor tried to save a little girl hit by shrapnel….
