To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. — Gustave Flaubert I have been a fan of “good quotes” for many years. At the prompting of a professor in grad school I began writing in a pocket-sized notebook memorable lines discovered…
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…
Creatures of habit. I am, — no question about it. Yesterday I walked away. I left a place where I have worked daily, departing from my role as owner of a company, the chief problem solver. The wind-down has been gradual, beginning six months ago. After a day of labor to tear down the…
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…
Today is our last day in Galena. Our accommodations are about a quarter mile from the home where U.S. Grant and his family lived. We could walk to the Grant place. It is on a bluff. The elevation affords a grand view of Galena. I consider that the high elevations around the town are…
It has been a while since visiting the Mississippi river town. It is close enough for a short road trip, a get-away from the day to day routine of home base. Everyone benefits from adventure. Travel brings different scenery, others whose way of life differs from our own. Who doesn’t desire to tell their…
The Beginning 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was…. There is always a beginning, at…
If I had to provide a definition, I would say that politics has to do with the relationship between a collectivity and the available and necessary resources, with the aim of employing such resources to increase the happiness of the collectivity -if we understand collectivity as the sum of its individual members, and happiness…
Millions of Americans are wrestling with the impossibility of a traditional middle-class existence. In homes across the country, kitchen tables are strewn with unpaid bills. Lights burn late into the night. The same calculations get performed again and again, over and over, through exhaustion and sometimes tears. Wages minus grocery receipts. Minus medical bills….
Yesterday was a mild, “feels like spring” day. Enjoying the sunlight, we took the Batavia River Walk for a stroll southward towards the dam by the old Challenge windmill factory. A visit to the dam is a reminder of the immense power of flowing water, moved by gravitational pull toward the Mississippi River ultimately…
