A life in words

  • Regarding Mom

    As today marks the twelfth anniversary of her suicide, my mom is in my thoughts. After all these years I still struggle to make sense of her memory. I see it all from the child’s perspective I had when I knew her, and from that point of view she was a paradox: somebody immensely kind…

  • This Wonderful World

    This Wonderful World

    Do yourself a huge favor and perform the following steps: Click here. Click on this button  in the upper right. Spend hours gawking. TIP: You can get another batch of photos by clicking  at the bottom. You may have noticed that hardly a post on this blog goes by without some sort of beautiful nature photo being…

  • Too Whatever

    A few weeks ago with some friends I watched a Finnish movie called “Äideistä parhain” (Mother of Mine). It tells the story of a young Finnish boy named Eero. Eero has a bit of a rough time through the course of the film. His father is killed in an air raid during fighting between the Soviet…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)