A life in words

  • Conversation with a pacifist

    Conversation with a pacifist

    The city I was born in (Richland, Washington) was created by the federal government as part of the effort to synthesize the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. As such I feel not responsible for, but somehow tangled up in, the legacy of that development, especially since reading Black Rain by…

  • Audio: Drumming by Seattle Kokon Taiko

    Recorded on my Galaxy S10 at From Hiroshima to Hope, 6 Aug 2023, Green Lake Park, Seattle. No copyright infringement intended. Recommend listening through headphones or good speakers.

  • Culture Peace

    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…. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus V.4, 1670, trans. A. H.…

There is nothing I dread so much, as a division of the Republic into two great Parties, each arranged under its leader and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This in my humble apprehension is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.John Adams, Letter to Jonathan Jackson, 2 Oct 1780