Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen
One unblushing admirer of the Dictionary was Jane Austen’s father, who assembled a substantial collection of books by Johnson, by his friends and associates, and about both the man and his circle. Inspired by her…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
By Little and Little
If you can just manage five minutes a day [to meditate], then do that. It is important to do whatever you can, no matter how little.—Dipa Ma I once wrote for a magazine: I made…
Share the Wealth: Gratitudes and Aspirations
The last week of the year is a fine time to look back on our occasions for gratitude these past 52 weeks and to look ahead to our aspirations for 2023. Join us Wednesday 28…
Letter to a Barista
Dear Fräulein Sabine, I read a book I think you might appreciate (as if you don’t have enough to read with your Civil Engineering course and your Higher Mathematics course and your reading Spinoza for pure…
Instruments
“Priez pour que soit pur le travail accompli par votre intermédiaire car vous êtes Son instrument. Souvenez-vous de Lui dans toutes vos actions. Plus pure sera votre pensée, plus belle sera votre œuvre.” —L’enseignement de…
Speed
[At this point a nurse showed up, interrupting our talk. Although he was only sixty-five {Jean-Paul} Sartre was already suffering from all the amphetamines he had taken his whole adult life and needed to receive…
Like Pat Geier, Jim Flynn, Jean Abbott, Andrew Wimmer, and Angie O’Gorman, for Example…
Remember, thousands of well-to-do mainstream Americans went to Central America to do things like living in a village, on the assumption that a white face might restrict terror against these people. This has never happened…
A Healing Pleasure
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or…
Come Gather ’round, Scholars, Whatever You Tweet…
M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up that false conception….
City Lights Journal, Revisited
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ed. City Lights Journal #4 See AlsoFerlinghetti, Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination Thursday 28 May 2018Cami gave me three Fabriano notebooks, and I had an itch to start in one of…