Recent Entries

• Heroes of the California wildfire catastrophe

  January 19, 2025

  “The world has never been as close to going to hell in a hand basket as it is today.  Never in the history of humanity have we been so close to planetary catastrophe…” Bernardo Kastrup “To outsiders, Los Angeles can come off as a faceless sprawl filled with artifice and isolation. But those who l...

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• Out on the Porch

  January 16, 2025

  The twilight was blurred and soft. Supper was almost ready, and the smell of cabbage floated to them from the open hall. All of them were together except Hazel, who would not come home from work, and Etta who still lay sick in bed Their dad leaned back on a chair with his feet on…

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• Rather than think about the looming dystopian future, I remember with fondness my senior year of college

  January 12, 2025

  I’ll never forget many details of my senior year in college. I was finishing up an English degree at the University of New Orleans. Prior to the start of classes in the fall of 1972, I found my first apartment in the Gentilly section of the city about two miles from school. I was soon…

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• Avoidance

  January 9, 2025

     When I saw that old man running in the park, and then the old woman walking by with her stick, I couldn't even look up at her. She was a clear-eyed apparition AndI was wide awake With calibrated indifference. We were all three the only ones In the park that winter afternoon, flush with&he...

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• Closing the chapter for good: Final thoughts and no more writing about my two years living and teaching in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1985-87

  January 5, 2025

  …Live for what the day has to offer, not what yesterday has taken away. Author not known If you live in one place long enough, you begin to lose the defenses you’re erected in order to survive in industrial civilization, and you fall into the rhythm of the land. You develop a different sense of&h...

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• The eternal Now and the “sky of mind”

  January 1, 2025

  One day the sun shall shine…into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as a bankside in autumn. Henry David Thoreau There is something about the light in late autumn and early winter that you don’t normally notice, but which...

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• Christmas greetings and Happy Holidays!

  December 25, 2024

  Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light. Albert Schweitzer I love this time of year, but it also brings with it, during the days leading up to Christmas Eve...

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• Winter is here, but this past Fall was the most colorful one I have ever experienced, and I had visitors to share it with

  December 18, 2024

  The leaves fall, fall as from far, Like distant gardens withered in the heavens; They fall with slow and lingering descent. And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls From out the stars into the Solitude. Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall And lo! the other one:—it is the law.&hel...

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• “Lola de Valence”: A mysterious painting that captured my youthful imagination

  December 10, 2024

  This entry is going to take me back almost more than 50 years to my high school days in New Orleans. I am not sure why, at this time, the particular person I am going to write about, or the painting that accompanies this piece, have been on my mind. But I think I may…

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