The sensualist cries out, “Stay a bit, my tongue has not concluded its encounter; wait a moment for my smile to widen.” If the sensualist could, he would stretch time like a length of elastic….. But experience is not simply a river you can’t step into twice (Heraclitus): it is composed of unrebreathable sighs;…
We arrived with just a few minutes to spare. Could this be the place? The winding roads, up and down through the grassy hillsides, the hollows, not that far from the Ohio River were exhilarating and disorienting for two guys from Chicago. Additionally we had overlooked the loss of an hour of travel time…
I never expected to visit Madison, Indiana. More to the point I never heard of the place until we passed through yesterday on our way to the Ohio River. The road trip to Kentucky was for the purpose of having a talk with Wendell Berry. Berry is a prolific author, essayist, poet– one who…
This morning I heard the news that Amazon is purchasing Whole Foods. Jeff Bezos acquires another weapon in his quest to slay the Wal-Mart behemoth. At least that is what the analysts are saying. The prime principle of 21st century greed-is-good Capitalism is “There Can Be Only One.” This mantra comes from the Highlander…
I do not enjoy thinking about, or writing about politics. I recognize that politics is a dimension of life. Yet we live in terrible times, by comparison to the time of my childhood and early adult years. In that time, with the exception of the Vietnam War years, politics was not a daily intrusion,…
“Things continue as they were since the beginning of the world,” is a saying from my early 20s heard while sitting in a college class room. The language has to do with the natural tendency to extend the present pattern of experience backwards and forwards. The denial of change is our default, our longing…
I have worried about something for a few months. My impression of the president has been of someone who is lying. Mind you I am not one who subscribes to a dogmatic definition of truth. There is no one to one correlation between reality and words. Reality itself varies somewhat person to person. It…
Waking before 5AM in the gathering morning light, my mission took me to Park Ridge. One benefit of a early start is once the client obligations are taken care of–enough of the day remains for reflection, and perhaps for a non routine project. During my return drive on 294 I listened to a few…
The Soil….is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care of it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life….
I grew up in North Carolina. As time passes I look back at my formative years as a kid in the 50s. My parents had life long careers working in the tobacco factories. Evangelical fundamentalist religion was the structuring element of our personal lives. In the pre civil rights days most of my friends…
