Philosphy

  • What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

    My brother visited over Thanksgiving. He drove, sorry, he sat in a self-driving Tesla and never touched the steering wheel from Utica, New York, to Bartlesville. He brought apples from a local orchard. They were perfectly ripe—crisp, sweet, juicy. It made me think that maybe our lives should be considered this way. Ripe means ready…

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  • Near and Far

    I grew up in a world of rote learning. For instance, I once knew all the abbreviations for the states before someone got wise and decided you only need two letters for each state. Kansas was rendered as Kans. which if you are scoring at home, saves you two letters but costs you a period.…

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  • Unfound Doors

    I’m writing this from the 17th floor of a beach-side balcony with one eye on the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean and one eye on my screen. The sun rises in the east just like at home where Karen and I admire it’s ascent from our garden patio each morning in Oklahoma. Here it…

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  • The Winter of Our Unsettled Season

    It was a tough year to be human in 2020. I mentioned this in passing to our cat, Boo, and she looked at me with cold green eyes, blinked, and walked away unfazed by the concerns of her bipedal servant. Oh to be so carefree. Alas, I’m feeling more Jimmy Buffett these days when he…

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  • April 4, 2020

    March 28  Questions of priority and sanity are framed in stark relief by cataclysm. For instance, “Why is it easier to buy marijuana than a good book these days?”, Wendy Paris asks in an LA Times article. Closer to home, a friend of mine wrote:  “I’m seriously confused, Dunkin’ Doughnuts is still open but parks…

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  • Colorado Travelogue: Red Bank

    I tagged along with Karen to a yoga studio in Denver on our vacation. On the mat next to Karen is a woman who lives in Connecticut, although she grew up in Red Bank, NJ. Karen grew up in New Jersey and we lived in Tabernacle, NJ during our early years of marriage. We are…

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  • A Note in Each Pocket

    My daughter Jenna texted me this message a few weeks ago while she watched the halftime events of an National Football League game. “Hey, Punt Pass and Kick is on the halftime show!” I didn’t bother to run and watch. I have seen kids kick a football. I was once one of those kids. I…

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