Monthly Archives: January 2018

Used to watch on lunch-hours on our newly acquired black and white tv set. First tv series that fired my young male romantic imagination.

(Author in his educator daze. Benevolent manipulation and control?) In 1972, I remember realizing, about halfway through my third year u modern American Literature course, that most, if not all of the selections, were about the theme of manipulation and control–a reflection … Continue reading →

(from The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age) -Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril. -Serious reading is above all an agency of self-making. -Syntactic masonry is already a dying … Continue reading →

“If you want a red rose,” said the Tree, “you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn.” …………………. “…for only a … Continue reading →

Dean Morrison McKenzie (on right) Friend, Poet, Spirit of the Great Heart (d. Feb. 4, 2013) The Gifts of Vision and Consciousness ………………… Above picture, fall 1990 at Southgate, Woodward’s Books. Spiritus reading to the Saturday afternoon throngs at an … Continue reading →

(Terry Fox’s runners) The baby and young child start life as gifts, unbeknownst to themselves. They are what they are, naturally, as much as a beautiful, undisturbed landscape or animal in the wild. Consciousness is relatively undeveloped through the early … Continue reading →

of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.” –Charles Peguy

71 countries had net declines with Trump’s America leading the way in the West. This is the 12 year of the current downward trend. “Democracy’s basic tenets–including guarantees of free and fair elections, the rights of minorities, freedom of the … Continue reading →

(continued to top film critics’ lists into the 1990s) Recent movies have tended to be loud, formulaic, preadvertised (trailers usually give away all of a film’s essentials), very commercial, flawed, dumb, crass, pointless, and geared toward What Faulkner called “the … Continue reading →

Mixed-media painted wooden plaque by local artist-teacher-friend Don Pimm, which graces our front hallway. He also did a painted representation of E.E. Cummings’ “In Just springtime” which hangs in my daughter’s house, a gift from me. The Red Wheelbarrow So … Continue reading →