The Trouble with Populism
“casting their ballots for the party that, despite its other failings, keeps entitlements inviolate, supports collective bargaining and has sought to ease the s...
Category: reflections
Brothers
I once was able to escape entirely into books, and could leave the world behind until one was done, no matter the troubles troubling my heart. My brother, a mer...
Serving Mammon
On Marketplace last night, Kai Ryssdal stated the unspoken obvious: “Guns are a business. A big business multi-billion dollar business in this country.” I’m rem...
Evidence
This here book I’m reading is older than I am, but just by a hair. It was checked out four times before I was born; the last just in time. It remained popular t...
Summa cum laude
Number One Daughter graduates from SUNY New Paltz tomorrow. What next for her? Number Two Daughter has returned home from for the Summer and is between plans. I...
An End, But Not The End
Toward the end of March 2020, searching the Internet for some solace
No One is Mowing Today
No one is mowing today. The dawn chorus sang its morning song for hours, until the hint of summer rose too high. Then the mourning dove announced it must be noo...
The Outliers
The population bump has reached the right-hand end of the curve: “The aging of baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, who were ages 57 to 75 in 2...
Making Mountains out of Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes
Pope Francis yesterday published, motu proprio, Traditionis custodes, revising certain regulations regarding the observance of what is commonly called the Tradi...
There is no pent-up demand
A story on Marketplace yesterday on euphoric shoppers on a spree after getting vaccinated suggests that there is pent-up demand that will explode once the enfor...
Roundabouts make better intersections
I hate cars. But really what I hate are the changes attendant on cars: the distance, the ugliness, the isolation, the fear. I hate the distance between houses, ...
Tinnitus
About a month ago, shortly after my annual physical, I was sitting in the quiet between the ending of the daily conference calls and dinner, and I noticed a sou...
Missing Conversations
The advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk is that you can see your readers, all two of them, and they might become interlocutors. While I like talking t...
Wallowing
I’m trying to enjoy Katherine May’s Wintering (2020) 📚 but I’m full instead of envy. I’ve carried that sin for years; it’s always close to the surface. Wh...
Preparations for the Storm
Waffle mixing here soon. I think perhaps coffee may be in order. I started reading Love in the Western World (1940). Twenty pages in the author is introducing h...
Little Fictions
I’ve been reading a fair amount of space opera and political science fiction recently: The Expanse, Old Mans War, A Memory Called Empire, Too Like the Lig...
Saturday, neither in the park nor the fourth of July
What will I make for breakfast this morning? I had a thought last night before bed, but I didn’t write it down and now don’t remember. I’m rea...
Parables of the Present
Started Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) 📚 this morning. Right away, I think: What do people think they will gain when society collapses? There̵...