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 common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves… to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection [and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption….George Washington, Farewell Address