Just because you can do it, does not mean you should do it. This is a most basic moral principle of basic moral principles as can be. This is also wisdom. If I heard it once as a child from my parents, I heard it a thousand times over—there is a place and time forContinue reading “Virtue and Freedom of Speech (Don’t Be a Schmeck)”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Musings on 2021 and 2022
Betty White did not make it to 2022. That seems almost a crime. I remind myself that, given where she started, she got considerably further than most of us will. Still, Betty White not making it to 2022 and to her approaching 100th birthday, when she was in apparent good health, does make one sad.Continue reading “Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Musings on 2021 and 2022”
A Rainbow of Joy and Hope: Transgender StoryTime, Denton, TX November 20,2021
Yesterday, I was privileged to be present at an event that had been at risk of not happening (and that would have been a shame). Yet, the threat against it became a catalyst that caused it to grow from one small library program (among hundreds) to a festive community celebration this year that drew manyContinue reading “A Rainbow of Joy and Hope: Transgender StoryTime, Denton, TX November 20,2021”
Hope
What is the essence of hope? I will define hope as the conviction that what is not yet realized or possessed is possible. To lose hope is to give up on possibility. Hope is the belief that the current state of things is never permanent. Even if the current state of things happens to beContinue reading “Hope”
A Chance Conversation
I recently married just a few weeks ago. I am in my mid-50’s and my wife in her early 50’s. Getting married at this time of life is not like that first marriage in younger days when you set out to build a life. By this time, quite a bit of life has already beenContinue reading “A Chance Conversation”
Worlds that May Be…Thoughts About Books and Imagination
In the novel Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, there is a small but subtly significant part about a bookshop called Underworld Books. In the story, the protagonist, a young man named Owen Hardy, comes upon the shop in the midst of his adventures far from home. In the window, he seesContinue reading “Worlds that May Be…Thoughts About Books and Imagination”
Time Well Spent
St. Augustine said that he knew perfectly well what time is…just so long as no one asked him what it was. I think we are much like Augustine. Until we have to think about it or give some kind of definition, we know what time is. But how to articulate what we seem to understandContinue reading “Time Well Spent”
“If I could wave my magic wand”…a remembrance of Neil Peart.
Neil Ellwood Peart passed from this existence one year ago today. When the news broke and I heard, I involuntarily got choked up. I have no pretensions to have felt anything approaching the grief felt by those who knew him. I am a fan, that is all. A Rush fan, though, is a little bitContinue reading ““If I could wave my magic wand”…a remembrance of Neil Peart.”
Language and Understanding
In my last post I spent some time talking about interpretation. I wanted to convey that interpretation has to do with the process of how we understand the world about us. Interpretations can be valid or invalid—that is to say, a good interpretation or a not so good interpretation. What we understand something to beContinue reading “Language and Understanding”
Interpreting Interpretation (Or, Understanding Understanding)
I have been thinking about writing a post or a small series of posts on words and language. Specifically, I want to talk about how words tend to become devoid of useful meaning when repeatedly used or misused. I am not speaking of how a word or a phrase can have multiple meanings or connotations.Continue reading “Interpreting Interpretation (Or, Understanding Understanding)”
Discursive Dialectics 