With the news feed always available via iphone it is easy to be tethered to stories of tragedy, large scale vistas of wrack-and-ruin, and the ridiculous. Is not man both the tragic and the absurd animal? For the sake of one’s mental health it is best to forego a glimpse at the news-feed freak…
June 1, 2017 the President of the United States withdraws from the Paris Accord on Climate Change. The rise in sea level accelerates. The ice pack at both poles melts at an increasing rate. Weather events increase in severity. Species extinction continues. Hotter more acidic oceans. Famine. Forests succumb to drought and disease. I…
Memorial Day weekend is generally considered to be the beginning of summer here in Illinois. A rule of thumb, anything planted before Memorial Day can be lost to frost. With the arrival of this weekend, it is as if one hears a starting gun. The race begins to capture to the full the benefits…
Once again I am reminded that paying attention, waking up is critical to living well. Perhaps that is why we are here –if there is a why. That seems as good an answer as any to me. Especially since all of the answers to the “why” of human purpose are speculative. Place your bet…
We are co-creators of culture. Culture is the web of meaning received from preceding generations. The way of things, our shared sense of life together is handed off generation to generation. A deeper, wider, more satisfying understanding of our place and time on the earth is received from the artists of successive generations. These…
I rose ahead of the sun this morning. The old creature of habit that I am, I do not enjoy breaking the 6AM start to my day. I’ve never lived on a farm, and have not acquired the mental toughness achieved by the obligation to care for animals at first light. My grandfather would…
A good discussion, spirited and wide ranging on the subject of time last night…… No final solution was offered to what is not a problem. Comment was made that time is a feature of language, and a feature of conscious awareness of ourselves within a world. Time is closely related to change, and we…
Tonight we will have a second discussion session on the topic of time. The Raymond Tallis essay was brief, a well expressed overview of the uses and the limitations of the language of time. Tallis made reference to the maxim that “time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.” Time and change…
The Saudi visit began with a traditional sword dance. The photo reminds me of a “ladies choice” dance at a high school prom. Yesterday the President gave a speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I listened to some of his speech broadcast on NPR. After a few minutes I could take no more of the…
Spring in the mid-west is unsettled. Every day one gets to draw blind, a card from the deck. One turns over the card to find one has drawn an Ace or the Joker. I remember a Memorial Day many years ago at Great Lakes Drag Strip. The afternoon was raw. I shivered, wrapped in…
