As the great 1918 flu pandemic was ending it appears that a general reaction among those, of all nations, who had survived was to try to ignore what had happened and resume their old lives. …

This morning I noticed a message from a firm that tracks birthdays and other occasions and reminds one of an upcoming event that would call for a card or message (which the company will gladly provide — for an additional fee, of course!). I clicked on it to see who…

Leviticus is a particularly interesting and unique book of the “Old Testament”, that is, the Torah, commonly called “the five books of Moses”. Leviticus is the only one of the five books has been constructed by a single “source” — the priests — without influences from various other writers, as…

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate The popularized version of astrophysics asserts that our universe started from a single point, infinitely small with infinitely great mass. This singularity…

This morning, for the first time, PayDay presented himself at the back door, edging toward his doggie door and so letting me know that he needed to go out. In the past Lanny would jump up as soon as I woke and moved off the bed, urging me to run…

My parents lived through hard times, including the Great Depression. I think that was partly what made them careful with money, something I learned from them as a child. They were shopkeepers, selling dry goods and draperies, both ready-made and made-to-order. Though their first store in Los Angeles went bankrupt…

That’s what I felt when my car-counting shift for Engineering 1A was finally over. I had started college as an engineering student, following the model of the elder brother I idolized. But by the end of my first year I switched majors, bored from the outset by my first assignment…

A wood splinter under your skin . . . ⁜ may be removed and the wound cleaned, to eventually heal, with only a small scar. Yet every time you notice or feel that scar you might feel a sense of concern, of worry, or even of fear. …

Reality is boundless; I vow to perceive it. — A Restatement of the Third Great Zen Vow Peter Plympton Smith, a former congressman from Vermont, was defeated in his bid for re-election by Bernie Sanders. Graduating from prestigious Phillips Academy, with a bachelors degree from Princeton and a doctorate from Harvard, he was hired as the new dean of…