A life in words

  • Christmas Carols in Prose #1: Joy to the World

    Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king! Let every heart make room for him and let saints and angels sing. Rejoice! Rejoice when Jesus reigns and saints sing; while fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the joy that’s sounding. Sin and sorrow won’t grow anymore. Nor will thorns…

  • Christmas Carols in Prose

    Traditional Christmas carols are perhaps some of the most familiar text in the English language. I love singing them each Christmas, but for me the plain meaning of these old hymns often “hides in plain sight” due to the excessive familiarity that comes after a lifetime of repetition. I’ve found that restating them in more…

  • Painkillers for the mind

    Once upon a time as a 14 year-old I became very depressed. I was told I had depression, a serious illness that I would have to treat by taking antidepressant medications for the rest of my life. I started taking Paxil (a drug since linked to increased suicidality in young people) and it seemed to…

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776