Stolen at Gunpoint

I’m grateful to have come across Kari’s kind correspondence in a file this evening. Dear Mark,  I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for taking the time to write The Book…

Serendipity

I was searching for one thing on my laptop,  and I came across this feedback  from a SLU student in 2006… Dear Dr. Chmiel, I am writing you to finally submit my insertion. I apologize…

A Letter from 2009

Thursday 26 February 2009 Dear Blair, Sorry it has taken so long to respond to your simple question—but as you are a teacher, I can probably count on your understanding. You wrote: “From everything you’ve…

How To Generate/Instigate Community

Invite 4 people over for a potluck and movie; I recommend Branagh’s Belfast. Do a regular Zoom with 2 or 3 of your best SLU friends, say every quarter, with or without certain topics, questions…

Dear Barista

There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s movie, Stardust Memories, where Martians come to earth, and Woody Allen’s character, Sandy Bates, seeks their wisdom about the meaning of life, and he has this exchange with them:…

Dear Anya

Thank you for your cool list of queries which I saw after I got back from vacation at Blue-Eye, Missouri! I will start  with an easy one:  “Favorite Book”— The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevskyas translated by…

Biographilia

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…

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…

An Out-Going Heart

Earlier today, I unintentionally came across the following writing in response to a prompt I received from Sara Rendell on September 9, 2013. We could learn a lot about having an out-going heart by following…