A life in words

  • 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,…

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Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character….Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus V.4, 1670, trans. A. H. Gosset 1883