The gentle art of sanity amidst civilization
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At playtime in the early grades, teachers always told us we were supposed to share our toys. We always did it grudgingly. None of us actually wanted to share them. But we figured there would be consequences if we didn’t, just as there were for not doing anything else they told us we should do. [...]
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This week celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that alien life almost certainly exists, and humans should do everything we can to avoid contact with it. He reasons that contact with aliens would probably be fatal to us, likening it to the European conquest of the New World: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the [...]
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When I was taking French classes a few months ago, we were each asked to write a composition in French and pass it to another classmate to read. It struck me then that I very seldom write more than a Post-It note’s worth these days. By the end of a paragraph, my hand is cramped [...]
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Another experiment has come to an end, but as usual, I’m not going right back to what I was doing beforehand. Just like my last experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, one of the habits in my life has been permanently renegotiated. To recap, a month ago I decided I’d go thirty days eating defensively. That [...]
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Last week, convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from prison by the Scottish government, on “compassionate grounds.” He is dying of cancer and has less than three months to live. Initial reactions were strong, but deeply divided. Here are just some of the millions of opinions that flew back and forth on Twitter, in [...]
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Asking for help has always been so hard for me. I always hated it when I couldn’t do something for myself. I felt like a failure. I was so used to being asked for help, I sort of felt like I’d lose my identity as “the knower” if I put myself on the other side [...]
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Meet Jake. Jake is a black-and-beige beetle I found in my bathroom garbage pail about a week ago. He seems in no hurry to leave. I don’t know what he’s been up to all week, but for now he’s residing in the maze of tissues and toilet paper rolls in my little white bucket. For [...]
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“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” ~Cesare Pavese By six o’clock on a Sunday night, the streets of Invermere were deserted. It was early fall, the middle of dead season for a skier’s town, and I was trotting down to the highway to hitchhike back up the mountain, to the resort where I [...]
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I feel very blessed. I seem to be drawing a small but growing group of some of the most thoughtful, intelligent readers around. I appreciate you all very much, you’ve done more for me than you know. I had a lengthy article all ready to go for today, but I’ll post it another day. I [...]
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The first thing I heard was the crash. I spun around on my stool, and she was already crumpled on the floor, head bent against the radiator. Her eyes were open and blank, and she appeared to speak, but it was just part of the seizure. She wasn’t there at all. Her movements were so [...]
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