“There are two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” -Albert Einstein I recently met someone who is striving to further the idea of the technological singularity. He used an interesting metaphor to describe his work. He asserted that, given …
“Hope is the thing with feathers” -Emily Dickinson This Thanksgiving, I was keenly aware of my gratitude for an absent member of our family. Had he lived, our son would have been four years old. I am truly thankful for his brief presence in our lives, which activated my paternal instincts, and gave me a …
“Then what are we fighting for?” -Attributed to Winston Churchill, in response to a suggestion that arts education be cut to fund the war effort. There has been a furor over recent cuts in humanities education at the university level in America. Most of the counter-arguments for keeping the humanities alive play out the “transferable …
“No motion has she now, no force; / She neither hears nor sees; / Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course, / With rocks, and stones, and trees.” -William Wordsworth, “Lucy” Yesterday marked the anniversary of the birth and death of a poet-friend’s son. Today we finished packing baby items originally bought for our own son, …
“The self that writes may need to be a delicate and protected creature, but the self that submits to magazines ought to be as tough as a rhino’s butt.” -Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry Organization is one thing. Discipline is another. The discipline of getting up early before work to write poems has saved my …
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” -Joseph Campbell Recently, we began the process of giving away baby items bought or given to us for our son, James. Since he never came home from the hospital, they remain unused. …
