Teachingis a kind of learning,much like loving,mutual goings-on,mutual forbearance,life itself, you might say. But how shall I improvethe swiftly-dimming hour?I shall deteriorate amid bucolic dreamsand gather in my fate.There’s lots worse ways than that. Alas,some goodbyes are like death;they bring the heart to earthand teach it how to die. Excerpt, Farewell to Teaching By…
Shortly we will depart Galena. A few hours of driving and we will be home again in Batavia. We take leave of Galena but our few days here have given us memories enough for many days and hours of satisfied reflection upon the people that we met, and all that we learned. The last…
I believe human freedom is narrowly circumscribed, channeled, confined by genetic inheritance, by the resources available for clothing, shelter, nourishment, safety, and above all shaped — by the values absorbed from the birth family, and mores of the zeitgeist into which I was born. None of these factors were and are, within my discretion….
The radio awakened me at 6AM, my usual rising time. Aware that if I lay there just a few more seconds I’d get additional rest before waking to the music again. Or I could go ahead and get up, and gain the 20 minutes of reading and writing time here at Starbucks. Either way,…
Monday is not a celebrated day of the week. For a many of us Monday signals a return to the responsibility, evaluation, tension of a competitive work place. Who looks forward to Monday? This Monday morning, I have promise of an answer to a conundrum which I have pondered for many years. Raised in…
There exists a creature that is perfectly harmless; when it passes before your eyes, you hardly notice it and immediately forget it again. But as soon as it somehow, invisibly, gets into your ears, it begins to develop, it hatches, and cases have been known where it has penetrated into the brain and flourished…
There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all books and paintings burned tomorrow, all…
Change can be counted upon. Today is sunny, yesterday was gray — tomorrow will be felt and seen as a unique opportunity. With the sunrise the day is born anew and so should I be. Yet I know that yesterdays challenges, the endemic obstacles and the inherited frictions within human nature endure from…
Years ago I was privileged to spend some time at the Pilchuck School of Glass, an internationally renowned community of artists in hot glass outside of Seattle Washington. Glass blowing is not an artform for the fainthearted. One must stand for hours, drawing molten glass out of a furnace as hot as a volcano. …
Saturday morning after Christmas day. State Street in Geneva is eerily quiet. Traffic is scarce. I’ve never before witnessed this scene of absence. No roaring eighteen-wheelers, vanity pickups and car traffic on this main artery to the bridge over the Fox River. Old buildings stand as a double row of street side tombstones…
