Resignation and courage
Joseph Joubert: “Resignation is a hundred times easier than courage.”
Mary Shelley: “a great and sudden change”
From Frankenstein.
Parking at Coney Island
Men of honor and men of play.
Small-town crown
What it can be like to live in a small town, or at least in our small town.
On ambition
The philosopher Mark Kingwell on ambition.
Robert Walser: “Ah, how lovely”
From “The Metropolitan Street.”
The New York Times : “End the Gun Epidemic in America”
“It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.”
Days and shootings
In the United States in 2015, mass shootings are outnumbering the days of the year.
A brief message from the Academy of Lifelong Learning
“A problem should retain its shape and size.”
[Your selection here.]
The one thing I have found helpful in times of tragedy is music.
No title
The flag of France.
No title
Umpqua Community College logo.
Yogi-isms
“Little things are big.”
Life and death and Molly Dodd
“Life goes on, Miss Dodd. Count on it.”
Dad words
I was the designated talker at the memorial service for my dad on Saturday. Here, more or less, is what I said.
James Leddy (1928–2015)
My dad’s last word, to my mom: “Thanks.”
On hiatus
Life and death matters.
Some more words to live by
“L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité.”
Wa kei sei jaku
What the world needs now: wa kei sei jaku.
Happy together
My turtles, like my people, have left my office for a new home.
My people
These people shared an office with me for years.
From Newark to Boston
“We were sitting in Newark’s Penn Station, waiting for the Bolt bus that would take our son Ben back to Boston. It was quite a scene.”
Things I learned on my summer vacation
An annual tradition.
Spot story
“This moment was my first experience of rudeness from a stranger in a long time. Elaine told me to let it go: was I going to let an idiot ruin my day?”
David Letterman on his show’s end
“There will be reasonable, adult acceptance of transition. Or I will turn to a life of crime.”
Walking on clouds with Nancy
The last day of school.
Door management
“My advice to my students: when you come to a door, open it. Go through it. Unless the door says ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ or something like that.”
Life style or life
From The New Yorker, in a film review by Anthony Lane: “one of the rare benefits of age: maybe you can start, at last, to tell the difference between a life style and a life.”
Oliver Sacks on death and life
“Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
Voltaire on intolerance
“[T]igers rip and tear in order to eat, and we destroy one another over paragraphs.”