My first Social Security check arrived this week, a bittersweet milestone. On the one hand, it means a modest release from the pressure of making a living; more time to smell the roses, so to speak. On the other hand, the check will be a monthly reminder of…
Articles from June 2022
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Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash
Instinctive speech diminishes us not
Is language something we are born with, or is it something we learn in the first few years of life?
Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash
Human lessons from birds’ vee
Honk time. One of those late fall mornings when the sky turns a Maxfield Parrish blue just before sunrise. One, two, three ragged files of Canada geese skim the treetops above my head, preceded and followed by their honking chorus, a noise of ram’s horns and shouts that would have toppled the walls of Jericho.
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Best cool things are often free
Hey, I think of myself as an outdoorsy kind of guy. I walk the woods and meadows every day. I bike. I climb mountains. I do my bit for the environment. So, when Outside magazine promises to tell me “The Best 120 Cool Things” for the outdoorsy life, I’m ready to listen.
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Organic machines aren’t expendable
They took the stage as representatives of “reason and wildness,” respectively, two articulate authors and thinkers who come at the world very differently.
Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash
Bringing flora, fauna with us
It has been my privilege for 38 years to walk to work each day through land that belongs to the Natural Resources Trust of Easton. Woods, fields, water meadows, a stream: This gentle countryside has been a source of solace, inspiration and education.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
A child’s world is better off wild
My walk back and forth to work each day takes me through land in the care of the Natural Resources Trust of Easton, a delightful landscape of woods, meadows, and streams.
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
A necessary evil, a quest for good
In recent days Americans have confronted the problem of evil as never before in our history. Succinctly, the problem can be stated like this: in a universe controlled by an all-powerful, loving god, why do bad things happen to innocent people?
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The new cosmology in tragedy’s wake
All human thought and action is guided by a cosmology, a collectively accepted story for where the world came from and how it works.
Photo by Louis Vest (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Water everywhere — even in space
Years ago, when the big drill rig arrived here to dig our well, the operator jumped out of the cab and marched around with a forked twig, looking for the best place to drill.