The young Marcel Proust was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. While I am not nearly the personage Marcel was, I too shall take [...]
Lesson For Today
Today’s lesson is more of a question than a lesson, because I just can’t get it off my mind. Being back in the South, I am surrounded by
Obese people
Professed Christians
The thing that bothers me is how often these two groups intersect. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with even a passing understanding of the [...]
Lesson For Today
With regards to electoral politics, there are people who believe that politicians are differently motivated or differently principled based on the party affiliation, and there are people who believe all politicians (but not necessarily all possible future politicians) to be essentially the same; money-grubbing, power-hungry influence peddlers who are only interested in personal acquisition and [...]
Lesson For Today
‘Tourism is the great soporific. It’s a huge confidence trick, and gives people the dangerous idea that there’s something interesting in their lives. It’s musical chairs in reverse. Every time the muzak stops people stand up and dance around the world, and more chairs are added to the circle, more marinas and Marriott hotels, so [...]
Lesson For Today
Lessons Learned
Watching the Carolina Hurricanes win their fifth game of the season (5-1-3) last night, I found myself annoyed with the way that they played in the second half of the game.
You see, when the Hurricanes build a lead, they tend to slack off and try to protect the lead instead of pouring on the [...]
Lesson For Today
It is actually a good bit harder than I thought it might be to glean a lesson from every day, particularly days like today, when I basically did nothing. So, leaving behind the life lessons type of learning for today, I did, in the course of planning our Spring garden, discover that between Jen and [...]
Lesson For Today
Today I learned that what I yearn for, what I am learning the skills to do, while it may go under many names (voluntary simplicity, back-to-the-land, homesteading, etc.) is really better thought of as voluntary peasantry.
Peasantry, from the 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays (countryside), is a pre-industrial agricultural way of life [...]
Lesson For Today
Looking back over the comments on this site, it seems that (from the outside at least) I lead an interesting life. I suppose that looked at from a certain angle, that is probably true. I don’t want to toot my own horn and act like I’m the most interesting guy in the room (though at [...]
Lesson For Today
Rollercoasters are only fun if you know you can get off…
Lesson For Today
Things are not so good in Hot-lanta these days: It seems that they could run out of drinking water within a month and foreclosures are at an all-time high.
Lesson For Today
The majority of what I write here is impersonal, in that it has as its subject life and society at a larger scale than merely me, though I do hope something of a unique voice shows through my muddled postings. However, having been recently inspired by Shimelle’s Learn Something Every Day idea, I have decided [...]
Thirteen Lessons In A Year
I began working on this site on February 14, 2006, a year and a day ago (and almost a decade to the day from my first web site). In that time I have spewed a fair number of words into the aether. I have also learned a lot of lessons along the way.
In honor of [...]
These are the ramblings of 