November 2025
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Context is important for me. Works of creation, athletic greatness, life-itself does not happen in a vacuum. There is always context. And where there is context there is influence. One of the things I created for myself years ago is a something I call “Writers/Artists in Context.” It is something I refer to often when Read more
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I have been thinking lately about my favorite NBA player of all time, Allen Iverson, and what he has in common with my favorite MLB player of all time, Rickey Henderson. Here is what I have come up with so far. Individuality Over Conformity Both Rickey and A.I. refused to blend in. They each played Read more
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“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower Read more
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“Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November 23, 2012. Thanksgiving began in the North Country as an unseasonably warm and sunny day, but ended wet and windy and cold. This morning the grass is coated with a light dusting of snow and Read more
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Book: The Last Kind Words Saloon, by Larry McMurtry Style: Western-Mythish Plot: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and other historical western characters like Buffalo Bill Cody and Charles Goodnight interact with fictional characters in a mythic West. Lines from the Opening Paragraphs: A hat came skipping down the main street of Long Grass, propelled only by the wind, which Read more
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“You are a traveller in little things–in something very small–which takes you into the villages and hamlets, where you meet and converse with small farmers, innkeepers, labourers and their wives, with other persons who live on the land. In this way you get to hear a good deal about rent and cost of living, and Read more
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Ever since I first heard Acoustic Blues I was hooked. It is more intimate, lyrical, and hits me on a deeper level than Electric Blues ever has.. Here is one of the legends, Lightnin’ Hopkins. Enjoy! Read more
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After rereading Doyle’s “The Lost World,” I decided to reread another Lost World tale, this one The Land that Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Unlike many boys my age, I never read any Edgar Rice Burroughs (or Hardy Boys for that matter) when I was young. Tarzan was familiar, of course, from television, the Read more
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In challenging times, hope is essential and yet difficult to always find. Here are some quotes about St. Francis and the nature of hope and religion from The Road to Assisi, by Paul Sabatier. On the Reformation:“The Reformation only substituted the authority of the book for that of the priest; it is a change of Read more
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“The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.” ~ Jimmy Carter Read more
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