“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
It is not that thin membrane between life and death that troubles me now. I’ve been pushed up against it. Friends and family have been pushed through it. I am of an age where it could appear at any moment … and I know the reality of that now in ways I could never have known it to be real before. Instead, I have been in a long mourning period […]
read more
In A Soldier of the Great War , Alessandro Giuliani, 74, a survivor of World War I, a survivor of fighting along the Isonzo, and in the Alps, a warrior spared execution, a prisoner of war who makes his escape, a great climber of mountains, a Professor of Aesthetics, a man reported dead three times, and a lover of one woman, Ariane, a man devoted to his son, a grieving husband and father, someone who has […]
read more
A day ago a friend told me of a couple she had known for years, college educated, altogether normal in conversation, who believed that Joe Biden, with the help of an undefined ‘they’, was manipulating the climate with contrails to make this spring cold and rainy. When my friend voiced skepticism, they sent her videos and testimonials from others who were convinced of Biden’s omnipotence and evil. They were certain. […]
read more
We live in a time when binary opinions are expected and when self-righteous indignation is the norm. An issue is black or white, a travesty or a necessity, a terrible injustice or a long coming reckoning. We are encouraged to forget about evidence, reason, logic, facts. Instead, we are supposed to take a side and hew to it. Emotion is truth. To question is akin to heresy. Doubt is forbidden. […]
read more
