A life in words

  • Conflicting Views of Georgia

    I’m not sure who out there has been paying attention to this when they could be watching Michael Phelps swim, but a conflict has arisen between Georgia (the country, not the US state) and Russia over a separatist region known as South Ossetia (technically part of Georgia, though in essence independent.) Here are a few…

  • Solzhenitsyn (Updated)

    I just learned of the August 3rd 2008 death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1970 and author of the monumental GULAG Archipelago. Many were his critics, East and West, but to me Solzhenitsyn was a hero. A quotation from the New York Times’s obituary sums it up: Hundreds of well-known intellectuals…

  • The Glory of a Summer Evening

    A hamburger with lots of pickles, accompanied by a big, leafy salad. Running barefooted across the cool grass as the color of a mango sunset drains slowly from the sky. Sand on my feet from volleyball, chlorine on my skin from swimming, and a tune in my head from a sing-along on the steps. And,…

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