DAILY BLOG
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“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” — G.K. Chesterton. Happy Thanksgiving! – Mark Read more
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A number of years ago, more years ago than I care to admit, I spent some time reading Emerson’s poetry. My plan at that time was to work systematically through the American poets: Emerson to Whitman to Dickinson to Longfellow and so on. I had already done a similar thing with Irish Poets and thought… Read more
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With the coming of winter, my mind is on outdoor cafes and warmer weather. Here is a picture of an outdoor cafe in Den Haag where I had a cup of coffee one beautiful spring day long ago. Read more
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Like most book lovers, I enjoy reading books about books. I got Michael Dirda’s book, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting and Living with Books, from the local library here as an ebook. Since one of the points Dirda makes early in the book is how he only reads physical copies of books (never ebooks)… Read more
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Years ago I remember reading that Yeats would constantly re-write and re-work even his most famous published poems. At the time I read that, it sounded like the most insane thing I had ever heard. Why go to all the work to make a poem, to get it right, have it set into type and… Read more
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I have been spending a little time of late again with Robert Browning, reading Chesterton’s biography of Browning and re-reading for the first time in a couple of decades his poetry in a serious and more formal way. I have never been far from Browning (who incidentally, shares my birthday) because certain Browning poems and… Read more
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I started playing chess online in earnest more than 25+ years ago. I remain a patzer. About 5 or 6 years ago I inexplicably stopped. Recently however, clearly in response to the election, I started playing again. I have lost whatever skills I may have had. But like books and baseball, chess helps keep my… Read more
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I think I have mentioned here before that I have learned that I need time to internally process things before I write about them. Is two weeks enough time to try to process what is unprossessable? Two months? Two decades? I remain convinced that the purpose of government is to protect the weak from the… Read more
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As any reader knows, sometimes you just cannot connect to a book the first or second time you pick it up. Yet if you pick that same book up at a later date and start reading you may actually fall in love with it. I have noticed that music works the same way for me… Read more
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In the mornings, I often go walking before heading to work. This time of year at 6:15am, it is still quite dark and the sky, when it is not overcast, is bright with stars. Here is a small poem about stars… and much more. Enjoy! STARS, SONGS, AND FACES by Carl Sandburg Gather the stars… Read more
ClimbingSky 