This has been written about Mother’s Day: [A mother’s work is] a job that is ever-changing and frequently exasperating. Moms don’t get days off, nor do they receive handsome salaries or generous pensions. Instead, their rewards come in the form of sticky kisses, necklaces made of elbow macaroni, and the satisfaction of seeing their…
Photographs …a way of giving information to people who do not take easily to reading. In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders (“framing”) seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from everything else: all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently. Photography reinforces a nominalist view of…
Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still recycling, it’s age-old habit, in mere images of truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great more images around, claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then about everything…
II There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing, No end to the withering of withered flowers, To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless, To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage, The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable Prayer of the one…
Two weeks traveling with a friend to the west, – from Illinois, to Missouri, to Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The occasion for the trip was a book which my friend plans to write, a definitive book about the history and importance of carousel animals for American culture. I felt lucky to…
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…
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…
