For years I’ve disliked containers that stand bottom side up. When they first came out, I didn’t trust them. I imagined the honey escaping its plastic jar, spreading among the spices, gluing them to the shelf.

When it became clear that they actually work, I discovered another reason to dislike them: the problem of the half-way mark. I

Soon after Wendy told me we had tickets to see Orlando at the Classic Stage Center in Manhattan, The New York Times published a Read original >>

William’s dream blog put me in mind of a similar venture I undertook a few years ago. For several months, I was fascinated with my dreams, recalling and recording them each morning. Hoping to share my treasure, I searched out an on-line Read original >>

William’s dream blog put me in mind of a similar venture I undertook a few years ago. For several months, I was fascinated with my dreams, recalling and recording them each morning. Hoping to share my treasure, I searched out an on-line Read original >>

When I was four, we moved to Hanley Hills. Sixty years later, my mother moved out. On Labor Day my siblings and I gathered to divvy up what she left behind.

I arrived in St. Louis late Saturday morning to find my sister Sharon waiting for me at the airport. We had no plans, except our usual visit to ... Read original >>

This past Friday, Larry and Anne Reinstein treated us to a performance by Banjo Dan and the Mid-nite Plowboys at the Charles R. Wood Theater in Glens Falls, NY. A poster in the window of the theater billed them as “New England’s Best Bluegrass Ban

Early last Wednesday morning Wendy and I set out from St. James to attend a conference in Conway South Carolina.

Our first stop was the Cinnabon at the Molly Pitcher Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, where we paid $3.59 for a bag of Stix, which I found barely edible, though Wendy said they weren’t so bad with tea. Her expectations were l

This past weekend, Wendy and I attended the Eighteenth Biennial International Workshop/Conference on Teaching Philosophy. It was not as stuffy as it might sound.

About a hundred and twenty philosophy teachers of all ages, ranks, and philosophical stripes gathered fo

Two weeks ago Wendy gave me a book she picked up during her trip to Oxford. She said it is part of a series in which contemporary authors incorporate myths into their narratives. This one involves Oedipus and Sigmund Freud.

Oedipus and Freud are two of my favorite characters, so I was interested, but when I saw the title - Where Three Roads Meet -

Somewhere in the course of my most recent transformation, I decided to earn a living as a communications consultant. The only problem: I had nothing in print. And so I started a blog.

I learned that writing is not easy; that the most important key is delete; and that no matter how many times you proof an essay before publishing it, the final ve

Last Saturday, Wendy and I went into the city to see the exhibition of the The Art of Illumination at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had seen it, but Wendy had not. It was well worth a second look. (See my Read original >>

A couple of months ago, I remarked on my surprise at hearing George Costanza quote a phrase from Pythagoras, a phrase that I had used in a lecture a few hours earlier. Yesterday I

A week ago, Paul Turgeon, Hektor, and I drove to Kimberton PA to visit Alice and to see Longwood Gardens, twenty-eight miles south. After slogging our way through Monday morning traffic in and around New York City, we pulled into the Kimberton Camp Hill ready for a taste of rural

Yesterday evening, Wendy and I took the train to the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle to attend a performance of Orient-Occident: A Dialogue of Cultures by Jordi Savall, part of the Lincoln Center's Great Performers series.

The musical performance at 8:00 p.m. was preceded by a panel discussion moderated by Ara Guzelimian, with Karen Armstrong, Manuel

Last night in my course on Sources of Great Western Ideas our topic was the immortal soul in Pythagoras and Plato. We based our discussion of Pythagoras on a fragment from Porphyry’s Vita Pythagorae, 19 (quoted in Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 238 from Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 14, 8a)
In the fr

There is something satisfying about cutting out pictures and pasting them onto things in unexpected ways. Maybe it has something to do with recontextualizing bits of reality in transformative ways. Maybe not.

A exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage,” demons

When we were at the Cloisters a few weeks ago, I saw a page from the Belles Heures of Jean de France. It was accompanied by a notice that the rest of the pages were on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until June 13, 2010. Because the book is currently unbound for “photography and conservation”, all the pages are able to be exhibited individ