I met with two friends yesterday at St. James Farm Forest Preserve in Winfield for a walk in the woods. St. James Farm was originally a retreat of many decades for the McCormick family. Chauncey and Marion McCormick purchased the farm in 1920. He was the great nephew of Cyrus McCormick who invented the first…
The body politic twists, wracked from the clarity of what must be done, distended in a contrary direction by a customary shape-shifting accommodation. Thus the odds are long that a decisive, kill-stroke will be delivered to the personification of anti-truth that looms over us… Trump and his acolytes, either costumed and embellished with facial…
I awakened to the news that the Democrats appear to have won the Georgia runoffs. That means that control of the Senate passes from the Trump Party to the Democrats. The new Biden Administration stymied at every turn by a Republican controlled Senate would have been a nightmare four years in duration. For me…
1. Across the United States, thousands of businesses have closed during the pandemic, but the demise of so many beloved hangouts cuts especially deep. They were local landmarks — watering holes, shops and haunts that weathered recessions and world wars, only to succumb to the economic ravages of the coronavirus. 2.The myth of a…
I am not sure when I learned to work. Learning how to work, is open ended, a quest that one pursues over the arc of years until one no longer has any curiosity, or the will to expend further energy. Work is the expenditure of energy in a focused fashion to achieve a more…
It is Christmas eve. Conditions have turned bone chilling cold outside. It is 12 degrees Fahrenheit according to the iphone weather app. Those are unforgiving conditions, like the honed edge of a tempered steel blade. I read this report in today’s New York Times, written by David Leonhardt: Yet it is also clear that…
In the course of the philosophy discussion of this week, the alternative viewpoints, of freedom or of determinism came up. This durable topic surfaces often with us. How free are we? Are we as free as we feel, as free as we were taught as Americans, a culture with a heritage of Enlightenment…
Waking at 7AM this morning I felt particularly disoriented. By dint of habit I made my way to the stairs, then to the kitchen. At the counter I poured a bowl of Cheerios. I mechanically assembled the elements of breakfast ticking off the components in turn: two packets of splenda, gallon of milk, banana,…
Monday morning. I had to ask a family member last night if this was the week of Christmas. The pandemic has shorn social encounters, parties, appointments with friends, all cleaved from Christmas. A chimera, a ghost of Christmas without heart is all that remains… The sensation of giving and receiving, the tokens of a…
Sunday morning before sunrise. Still dark outside. I have the privilege of taking a nap later in the day if I choose. Why not get up, do some reading, explore the contents of my mind? Aspiring to find words to more clearly understand this time, the events occurring globally, in America, and in Batavia…
