osopher.wordpress.com
08 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/08
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 8th, 2015. August 8, 2015. Birthday of poet Sara Teasdale (1884), who understood life’s bargain opportunity: When I can look life in the eyes, / grown calm and very coldly wise, / life will have given me the truth, / and taken in exchange my youth. WA. Beware young people who think they already know it all, and old people who don’t accept the bargain. On this day in my youth, in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. TD. 7 am/6:01, 67/90. The new s...
osopher.wordpress.com
07 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/07
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 7th, 2015. August 7, 2015. Meanwhile, in our local election, none of the at-large candidates for five spots on our bloated city council could manage to garner even 10% of the vote. Rather than a run-off, since the amendment to shrink the council failed, how about a lop-off? The voters have spoken. But there’s good news: the right mayoral contender came up just a little short. They’re already adrift and at sea. How far can they go? The new site is a succe...
osopher.wordpress.com
05 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/05
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 5th, 2015. August 5, 2015. Birthday of poet/novelist/farmer/environmentalist Wendell Berry (1934), whose poem about a man who diligently archives his vacation but still misses it could be an allegory of life in our socially mediated, digitally translated time. WA. 8230;preserving his vacation even as he was having it. So that after he had had it he would still. Have it. It would be there. With a flick. Of a switch, there it would be. But he. The new site...
osopher.wordpress.com
03 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/03
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 3rd, 2015. August 3, 2015. It’s been sixty years since Samuel Beckett affronted English theater convention with Godot. VLADIMIR: There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet… We can still part, if you think it would be better. ESTRAGON: It’s not worthwhile now.Silence.VLADIMIR: No, it’s not worthwhile now.Silence. ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go? VLADIMIR: Yes, let’s go.They do not move. Or would you have moved? Bye bye ESTRAGON:...
osopher.wordpress.com
06 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/06
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 6th, 2015. August 6, 2015. Fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (1965). We’re still overcoming. Appropriately it’s voting day here in Nashville, near ground zero for events that precipitated that historic legislation. Our mayoral race does not excite me, though I do want to see the defeat of the candidate who was stupidly quick to declare the Charleston atrocity non-racially motivated. And how many would have voter’s remorse? Anti-intellectualis...
osopher.wordpress.com
04 | August | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/08/04
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for August 4th, 2015. August 4, 2015. Birthday of Louis Armstrong (1901), who really did think it’s a wonderful world; and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792), kicked out of Oxford for writing risque poetry and disbelieving in God, who said “Do it now write nothing but what your conviction of its truth inspires you to write. He died before he was 30. Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane, cheerfully advised:. Via Blogger http:/ ift.tt/1IVNMlk. The new site is a successor in sev...
osopher.wordpress.com
July | 2015 | Up@dawn
https://osopher.wordpress.com/2015/07
Reflections caught at daybreak. Archive for July, 2015. Laquo; Older Entries. July 31, 2015. Two great justice-seekers, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1837) and Primo Levi (1919), were born on this date. Labor crusader Jones has become a progressive icon, Auschwitz survivor Levi a reminder that our greatest foe is our own tendency “ t. O believe and act without asking questions.” WA. I recently finished Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. TR was often a hell-raiser and usually a justice-seeker, if ...
osopher.wordpress.com
Up@dawn | reflections caught at daybreak | Page 2
https://osopher.wordpress.com/page/2
Reflections caught at daybreak. Parting advice, unsettled hash. August 3, 2016. Trotting out William James’s signature parting words once again today, for our last Stroll Thru Western Civilization class of the summer. They were never more apt. 8220;There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be given.–Farewell! That the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lat...
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