Category: Living

It’s the holidays in 2020, and I’m sure many of us are plotting how, exactly, we’re going to connect with our friends and relatives in a time where we’re either encouraged or directed to stay away from other human beings. Gone are the office holiday parties of yore, at least for now, and also forgotten are the grand family gatherings, with extended relatives coming in via plane train and automobile to share gifts, bad habits, annoying tics, and poor holiday fashion choices. In their stead is a lot of online communication: my son, for example, will be sharing the seventh night of Hanukkah via Zoom this evening with his Jewish friends in Seattle. My tradition is Catholic; my son’s tradition is whatever transformation of Christian charity and mid-nineteenth century American pragmatic that I’ve been cobbling together, but he’ll get to incant

Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai 

E-lo-he-nu Me-lech ha-olam 

with his friends tonight as the candles are lit, as the seventh candle is lit, as we all collectively remember the miracle of the eight nights of light.

Continue reading “Relations”

In the beginning, there was chaos.  
Stimulus and perceptions entered consciousness, undifferentiated.  
How to know what mattered most?  
That was (and still is) the core question of the initiated.  

Continue reading “The Arc of Theoretical History (Part 1)”

A few years ago, I flew to Canada to attend a friend’s wedding.  Towards the end of my stay I lost my mobile phone. There was a time when losing a phone would be nothing more than a moderate inconvenience, since they can be insured, quickly replaced, and have neither intrinsic nor sentimental value. They once were disposable items.  However, in the past decade they have become objects of greater significance owing to the large amount of information they store and the multiple functionality they possess.  We use them to send messages and emails, connect with social media applications and the internet, store contact details and photographs, wake us up in the morning and tell us the time during the day, allow us to pay bills and transfer money, listen to music and watch videos and podcasts, find our current location and the best route to our destination, and, from time to time, we even use them to make phone calls.

Continue reading “Reciprocity”

With apologies to Abraham Maslow, I suggest our primary needs as 21^st century human beings living in developed countries center around food and water, rest, shelter, and physical connection with others. Each of these needs can be fulfilled in basic, transactional ways, but can also be achieved in transcendent moments, allowing the bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid to leap upwards…self-actualization attained through the fulfillment of basic needs.

Continue reading “Broken Bread and Poured Out Wine”

Today was Thanksgiving in America (or actually it was yesterday – I’m writing this somewhat late). I took my son over to my parents’ house and we had a proper feast. I was responsible for the turkey, and I made it with an old fashioned oyster stuffing, and I don’t think I’m being immodest in saying that it was spectacular. I also made sausage dressing and brussell sprouts. My mom made what she calls “holiday potatoes” – which are mashed potatoes with a ratio of potato to cream and butter of roughly 1:1, similar to Joel Robuchon’s potatoes but she adds minced onions and it’s far better, since I’ve had the chance to have Chef Joel’s potatoes in a past life courtesy of investment banking expense accounts – and she also made glazed carrots, also spectacular, and candied sweet potatoes, which are so candied I can’t even try to taste them. Oh, and together we made about a half gallon of turkey gravy, which will clog our veins for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading “Dog day nights”