thought on life

The land down under has turned up over everyone lately, with people driven into the sea and a billion animals killed in wildfires. Here in northern California, Paradise still casts…

Four months after the misnomer of the “Camp Fire,” the devastation in Paradise was worse than I’d imagined. Like death, nothing prepares you for it. Though only 15 minutes away,…

In the foothills beyond town, toward where Paradise used to be, snow coats the slopes like granulated sugar. I walk downstream to the meditation site on the creek, which is…

Even with the late rains this year, the mountain reservoir is surprisingly full, fuller than I’ve ever seen it. Public access down at the lake is closed today, so we…

Is the “arc of the moral universe” an illusion, or does “it bend toward justice” as Martin Luther King famously said, and Barack Obama maintained to his last day in…

Western philosophy, like Western civilization, is in crisis. What Plato called “the highest music” has been reduced to a discordant echo of science. Pouring salt in the wound, Stephen Hawking…

Russia-phobes are in full flower as America descends into the Trump swamp. Fear and hostility between the two peoples are greater than at any point since the Cold War. But…

The silliest line of the week came in the form of a review of “Interstellar,” a recently released echo of that unsurpassed science fiction epic, “2001, A Space Odyssey.” Here’s…