I received a link to a New Yorker article from a friend. The link lead to a seventeen page detailed exploration of the career and the present work of Attorney General William Barr. The piece was entitled, Trump’s Sword and Shield by David Rohde. Simultaneously drawn and repelled by the prospect of reading the…
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…
With the final integration of the instinctive and the spiritual by means of human techniques, the edifice of the technical society will be completed. It will not be a universal concentration camp, for it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not seem insane for everything will be ordered, and the stains of…
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…
Just started a new book, a slim volume by a Brit philosopher/intellectual entitled Capitalist Realism-Is There No Alternative? One thesis of the author, Mark Fisher, is that the premises of Capitalism are so embedded in our consciousness that it is almost impossible to imagine alternative ways of organizing a society. This constitutes an…
The Golden Globes. Of course, the Sunday night live broadcast on NBC is hard to walk away from. At the end of the day with the best of my attention, effort, and quotient of energy already spent — why not be mildly entertained by the first of the entertainment industry award season shows? I…
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…
Friday morning at Starbucks, the room is a-twitter with rising and falling conversations from tables — not unlike a tree full of blackbirds. The sound of life, the exchange of advice, consolation, the ritual of community. I am fortunate to be here. My sleep of last night was interrupted by a strange early morning…
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…
