I wrote this October 1, 2018. I was thinking about getting older and how that meant getting stronger or more concentrated or something; and of course life imitating art as it does, this particular coffee shop morning conversation happened at the same time. I was also thinking about the Kavanaugh hearings and the extraordinary anger […]
This first ran May 17, 2017, and Chris still finding stuff. He’s also gone on to serious work at the local historical society. His retirement looks to be going splendidly. So do his pandemic plans, as all he needs is a stockpile of postcards, the internet, and the ability to merge the lost past into […]
I walk out my front door after dinner to check on the night, and before breakfast to check on the day. And every now and then, on the porch table, or the porch floor, or the front sidewalk is an arrangement — rocks, berries, plants of some sort. They’re not put there at random, they’re […]
Last winter I was staying with friends who have a dark sky. (I don’t have a dark sky and even on clear nights I can hardly see Orion, which makes me sad but I’m used to it.) It was New Year’s Eve and as usual I bugged out early, went up to the guestroom, adjusted […]
This post is not implying a resemblance between the current pandemic and the perfect storm of disasters that hit Florence in the mid-1300s. Nor is it evidence for the half-assed notion that out of disaster comes good. It is only to say that sometimes beauty has deep roots. This first ran January 17, 2012. To […]
“It was nothing to just sit on the phone for an hour, wrapped up in those long curly cords,” writes my friend. “An hour-long phone conversation was totally normal. In my teenage years, I could just sit on the phone all night long.” That’s a comforting image, isn’t it — my friend but younger, curled […]
Freeman Dyson’s death is a little like the death of the last member of a rare species, only he didn’t even belong to a species, he was a one-off individual, he was singular. The point is, the world is a less interesting place now. I wrote two posts about him; one was about his astonishingly […]
My neighbor likes to ask big questions about big ideas. He’s not pretentious and doesn’t pontificate, so I think he just likes big questions. Anyway, the other day he asked what the necessary components of an ideal public education were. “Writing,” I said, naturally. He agreed partly because, he said, good writing involves good thinking. […]