“Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.”
This is interesting (Abbey again):
“Good writing can be defined as having something […]

Woohoo and life is a’movin’!
I broke my foot a week ago - three small fractures to be precise. I was riding my bike downtown with a good friend and got my front tire caught in a trolley track. I spilled sideways and my right foot caught the impact. I have crutches […]

This is interesting:
Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life’s hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don’t; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and […]

There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable, for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment– when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid the state may be distressing, but […]

Because they don’t teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know that does […]

The NY Times had a beautiful little piece on its editorial page on March 3. Because the piece is now “archived,” I’m pasting the whole thing below:
Bird feeders across much of America are mobbed with black-capped chickadees at this time of year. Can you tell them apart, one by one? Probably not; it’s hard enough […]

“Ask me: what’s the secret of great comedy?”
“What’s the secret of great comedy”
“Timing”
…of course, it has to be perfectly timed.
(thank you, Caterina & HB!)
And here’s a good/bad pun I hear recently:
Q: Who do you get when a Palestinian marries a Minnesotan?
A: Yassir Youbetcha!