• Thoughts

    An Inevitable Implication

    My family and I spent the first day of the new year visiting Dennis’s parents in New Hampshire. I guess it’s nice to get away from home once in a while, but no more than that. I’ve become too much…

  • Thoughts

    Roughly Recognized

    According to Gary Saul Morson in Hidden in Plain View, “In the early reviews of War and Peace, objections were raised most frequently against the plot. ‘This disordered heap of accumulated material,’ as one reviewer called it, was perceived as…

  • Thoughts

    Be Still

    A fifteenth-century poet named Hatton Ransetsu wrote a lovely haiku that I discovered quite by accident, but it speaks to me: Pine tree silhouettePainted by the harvest moonOn a shining sky I have photographed such silhouettes on more than one…

  • Thoughts

    The Words I Choose

    Freedom, love, duty, faith: these words have taken up residence in my mind, and they don’t seem likely to hightail it out of town any time soon. Safety, on the other hand, is a word absolutely not welcome in my…

  • Thoughts

    Who Wanted It First?

    Yesterday, I tried to put my finger on what separates me from so many people I encounter. I tossed around one notion after another, but none felt quite right until I hit upon the word “quest.” Yet even that misses…

  • Thoughts

    My Own Thing

    How often do I change my mind, my outlook, my convictions? Yes, my convictions. If I don’t blindly hold onto a belief my entire life, it doesn’t mean that I am a moral relativist, and if I don’t keep up…