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Category Archives: Comments on Life

In Steubenville

24-Aug-20

Gelendzhik One June morning in 1999, I set out from my Manhattan apartment and rode my bicycle into Central Park. I headed north on the park’s circular road, just like all the other people getting a little exercise in before work began.  Some were riding, some were running, some were walking; but I didn’t see anyone […]

The Strange Obligation of Happiness

02-Aug-20

Debre Mark’os Reginald Foster on doing what you want: “I say, ‘dummodo felicissimi sint.’ You have to be happy, because that calendar over there in the corner, it’s turning over, and it’s not going to wait for you, and when you’re dead no one’s going to care.”

Swift Observation on Adversative Coordinating Conjunctions

29-May-20

In the universe, there are no opposites and no contraries; adversatives are all a matter of interpretation, the operation of brain in the world. They are eloquent insofar as the interpreters share a common worldview, which links together certain traits. They are hence useful for interpreting a person’s worldview. Two different writers might write: “She […]

Shakespeare, In Praise of More Babies.

10-Mar-20

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer’s green all girded […]

Consequences

28-Feb-20

“Order says there is no wrong or right. You just reap what you sow.”

The New Gold Dream (15 – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19)

07-Dec-19

There have been two times when my mother told me I was the cause of a deep, complete satisfaction with her life, and I’d like to talk here about the most recent and final one. A few years ago my mother came to visit Catherine and me a day or two after the birth of […]

In Memoriam T.K. Rabb

17-Oct-19

One of the things no one told me about having children is: as you reach the age when you are focusing on your kids and birth and new life and all of that, the world you grew up in is passing away: death comes to claim his due from your aunts and uncles, your family […]

Gendering Three Little Pigs.

08-Mar-18

I’ve now just recently read two different retellings of the Three Little Pigs story for children which both recast the tale as one of gendered virtue: in each retelling, the wolf and the two unwise pigs are male, while the wise pig, who builds a house of brick, is a female.  That the tale was […]

The Journals of Jean Sibelius.

21-Oct-17

At a certain point in my college career I stopped worrying very much about my classes, and decided to get my education directly from the university library.  One of the books I read at the time was Erik Tawaststjerna’s monumental three-volume biography of Sibelius.  I often find that great musicians can also write, but Sibelius […]

Twenty Months.

01-Sep-17

Catherine has taken the children down to New York City, stopping there briefly before heading west. I am left alone in the cabin for the last few days of summer. After Labor Day I will join Catherine in Ohio, where we will spend the final month of Catherine’s pregnancy, awaiting the birth of our third […]