I just adore my 14-year-old, Chloe. I remember feeling the same way about Maeve when she was 14. At that age kids feel SO grown up—when they are actually the most fragile and vulnerable. So it is time to be worried about her. If you are a parent, I hope you know that suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. If you don’t know that, you’re not doing your job right. Teenage suicide is almost always caused by clinical depression, even if triggered by some life event, such as … [Read more...]
“Credit” Is a Word Used to Exploit You: Step One in Economic Resistance
December 25, 2013 By 5 Comments
Lately I’ve been thinking more about social justice than about theology or philosophy or poetry. I am just as concerned as anyone else about our economic situation, caused by the greed, stupidity, and selfishness of the wealthy. They bully and exploit the other 98 percent of us with impunity, because our government, which they largely control, has stopped using the means provided by our laws to keep them from doing so. You cannot strike back by illegal means, for exactly the same reason that a … [Read more...]
The Ocean Level and World Temperature Have Been Rising for 20,000 Years.
September 8, 2013 By 2 Comments
Google “Doggerland.” Look at the maps, read the articles about underwater archaeology. At the peak of the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago, the ocean level was 400 feet lower than now. Europe extended far out into the Atlantic; the British Isles were its highlands. The Rhine and the Thames joined and flowed into the Atlantic. What is now the North Sea was a fertile plain and the home of the earliest civilization. The oldest city now known is under the North Sea, about parallel with … [Read more...]
Wisdom Is Sold in the Desolate Market
June 21, 2013 By 13 Comments
What is the price of experience? do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children. Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy And in the wither’d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. . . . It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted, To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer . . . It is an easy thing to rejoice in … [Read more...]
Blogging as Dedication to the Search
June 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
I miss the lively conversations I and my friends had on my Gardnerians All Yahoo group a few years back. For that matter, I miss lively conversations via email in general. There seems to have been a shift in American communication styles over the last few years. I’m seeing far more use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, and much less personal communication. Facebook has reconnected me with dear friends I thought I’d never be able to find again, and I can get messages to many people … [Read more...]
The Problem of Consciousness, Part I
May 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Sometimes philosophy begins by asking what seems to be a dumb question, that is, by questioning what seems so obvious that it has never been questioned. For example: “Why is the sky dark at night?” Isn’t the obvious answer that the sky is dark after sunset? No, as has been realized during the last century, the light from all the billions of stars in the universe does not fade away; it just bounces around. That’s because of the law of the conservation of energy: energy can be neither … [Read more...]
25 Random Facts About Me
May 6, 2013 By 2 Comments
Rummaging around in my directory of raw materials for possible blogs, I came across the following, posted as a note on Facebook about four years ago, inone of my very rare responses to a game request. (Often I unfriend the requesrer for wasting my time.) I had fun with this and it previewed several topics I've since written about. So enjoy. 1. Starting at UC Berkeley at age 16, I was invited to a reception to receive Honors at Entrance. I found my hand being shaken by Robert Gordon Sproul, … [Read more...]
Rodin and Claudel
March 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
And God will pardon Paul Claudel Although he sent Camille to hell. Artists sleep with their models and paint Their lovers, fall in love and fall again. Women are always in their lives. Art needs love, as life needs rain. When he ascends to that white-hot space Where the Gods control his hands, Prudence (that rich, ugly old maid) Does not exist in his universe. Painting after painting … [Read more...]
Another Song of Innocence: The Kitten
March 1, 2013 By Leave a Comment
My loyal readers may have noticed that I like William Blake a lot. In his first major collection, the Songs of Innocence and Experience, each poem about Innocence is paired with one about Experience. His best-known poem, The Tyger, is paired with one about a lamb. I've never thought it was a good pairing; not symmetric aenough. So I thought I'd try to improve on it. Please note that I am here playing with Blake's concepts and vocabulary. This was dedicated to Terry Seamons, on Buddha’s … [Read more...]
Of Infinity, Divinity, and the Big Bang
February 4, 2013 By 6 Comments
My poem Five Canticles of Wisdom begins 0 In the beginning there is no beginning. There is only the Goddess and her name Is Everything-All-the-Same and Fullness. I When Her name is Wandering Wide, She danced on the waters. Before She turned upon the wind, The stars are Her daughters. She turns upon the elements A dance of celebration That to watery nothing gives A name and habitation. Her dancing turned upon the wind; The wind snake … [Read more...]
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