September 12, 2023 – 12:16 am
Once again I must apologize for the spotty content here lately (aside from the item I popped up for discussion yesterday, which is really just me picking at a very old scab from a different direction). I’ve had enough of jeremiads about the state of our decline and misrule; it would be easy enough to […]
August 22, 2023 – 6:13 pm
Here is a brief and almost impossibly concise rationalist apologia for Christian belief, given by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox. I’ll quote just two little gems from his speech. The first: “People are so desperate now to show that the universe created itself from nothing – which seems to me to be an immediate oxymoron: […]
August 19, 2023 – 11:36 am
Sorry — even though the kids and grandkids (who were here for more than a month) have gone, I still haven’t been writing much here at the blog. We’re still in that lazy summer mode, and have been fully occupied with, as they say, “touching grass” (and, in our case, sand and water as well). […]
I learned with great sadness the other day that my good friend of more than thirty years, Anthony V. Bouza, died late last month in his adopted hometown of Minneapolis. He was 94. In his long career as a policeman Tony rose from his humble origins, and the lowest rank, to the penultimate pinnacle of […]
Happy Independence Day, everybody. Attending the 4th-of-July parade in a small New England town — lots of smiling happy families, and Old Glory on display everywhere — is a reminder that wherever things are headed in America, it ain’t over yet. Our daughter, her husband, and our three young grandsons — Liam, almost seven, Declan, […]
For years now I’ve been writing, in these pages, about a few points that I think are central to understanding the decline of American — and, more broadly, Western — society and culture. (I might as well have been yelling up a drainpipe, for all the good it’s done, but at least I’ve been trying.) […]
Sorry for the scanty content; I’m away on one of my musical retreats with the Shoal Survivors. Back this week, with plenty to talk about.
I’m at the point where I don’t see much use in banging on endlessly about how broken things are, and about what a decadent position we’ve reached in the great cycle of civilizations — but every now and then I suppose we need a little reminding, just to keep the fire going, and today at […]
An important concept, and one that I’ve written about myself, is the idea of “time preference”: how willing a person is to defer present consumption or enjoyment in order to earn a dividend in the future. The classic example is the “marshmallow test”, in which small children are given a marshmallow, told that the adult […]
Sorry to have gone quiet again. I’m now back at home in Wellfleet after spending a few days in New York City (where we’ve spent much less time since selling our house in Brooklyn in October of 2021). I’m glad to be back on my little dirt road in the woods — NYC this time […]
It’s jarring when, at a dinner gathering or small social event, you encounter a mind that conceives reality in a way so utterly, radically, axiomatically alien that you cannot believe you both could possibly inhabit the same objectively existing world. This happened to me recently at a friend’s house. The person in question — a […]
February 4, 2023 – 9:33 pm
Well, that was one of the odder news-items of recent years: a Chinese balloon drifting over the continental U.S. while we all just sort of gaped at it — as it if were some wandering heavenly body, like a comet or Oumuamua, rather than an floating intruder sent into our airspace by our most formidable […]
February 2, 2023 – 2:46 pm
After nearly a month in Thailand, we are back in Wellfleet at last. It took us 38 hours of traveling just to get home, and together with a 180° day/night phase-reversal, we’re pretty whipped. Thailand was a pretty place, the food was good, and the people seemed unvaryingly friendly, kind-hearted, and cheerful, but it was […]
January 20, 2023 – 1:17 am
Just a post here to let readers know that I haven’t fallen off the Earth, although I am on the other side of it – the lovely Nina and I are currently in Koh Yao Yai, Thailand, where we went (on the world’s longest nonstop flight!) to meet up with our daughter, son-in-law, and three […]
December 31, 2022 – 11:50 pm
So long, 2022. (I wonder how long it will be before we once again have a year that we aren’t glad to put behind us.) It was a difficult year personally (though not nearly as bad as for some of our friends in the blogosphere). I grappled with a dark cloud of weariness and depression […]
December 21, 2022 – 9:46 pm
It’s been a very long time since I posted anything here – or anywhere. I’m hoping to be “fit for purpose” again soon, but until then, I’ll just wish you all a happy Christmas, and good health and fortune in the New Year.
September 14, 2022 – 7:58 pm
The lovely Nina’s mother Lily died a couple weeks ago, at 101. Her obituary is here.
I’ve been enjoying a respite from online engagement this summer, for reasons given in the previous post. Our daughter, her husband, and their three young sons (one is three-and-a-half, one turned six yesterday, and one is five months old) are staying with us, and the days are a noisy, happy chaos that leaves a bloke […]
I’m writing to acknowledge the sorry state of this blog of late. I keep thinking I’m going to snap out of this slump and start writing regularly again, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s partly that I’m getting on a bit (though I’m only sixty-six, and can easily manage my daily mile […]
The lovely Nina and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversay today!
Sorry for the scanty content – the lovely Nina and I are in Minnesota until the weekend (and I’ve nothing new or interesting to say at the moment anyway).
Now and then I post things on Twitter, and tonight’s experience – in which I simply tried to make the point that the abortion question is a terribly difficult and complex one, about which decent and reasonable people can have different moral intuitions – reminds me why the chances of this nation’s persisting much longer […]
Here’s an interesting tool, if you’re young and looking for a place to raise a family: the Opportunity Atlas. It tells you what your income (and other) prospects are in different places, with filters for various categories of people.
April 17, 2022 – 12:15 pm
We’re back from Savannah. It really is a beautiful place, and I’m sure we will visit again. The gracious architecture, the charming little squares that break up the urban density, and the fragrant, luxurious flora all provide the unforgettable aesthetic effect of a high civilization in a kind of sated languor. It was perfect for […]
April 10, 2022 – 11:04 pm
Ah, this world… I’d hoped I might have had something original, or at least interesting, to say in the few days since my last, rather apologetic post — but it’s Spring, and the lovely Nina and I haven’t gone anywhere since March of 2020, so on an impulse we are heading South for just a […]
Jeepers, where does the time go? I had no idea it had been so long since I’ve written anything here; I’ve been distracted with what’s known as “IRL” stuff (which, I suppose, is not altogether unhealthy). Among the things I’ve been doing has been reading a lot. Right now I’m re-reading a book called The […]
March 13, 2022 – 12:24 pm
I haven’t had much to say — Ukraine is all smoke and fog and lies and propaganda, and I’ve been focused on personal matters. Now we are off to NY and NJ for a few days (Nina’s having surgery on her hand), and I don’t expect to be posting anything till we get back. A […]
February 23, 2022 – 11:52 pm
That great rumbling sound you’re hearing is history resuming. Reports of its death, or that it has “sides”, were greatly exaggerated. We see tonight, as we have seen again and again and again, century after century, that imaginary “order” based on political and diplomatic abstractions — or on anything but a vector-sum of power, fear, […]
February 21, 2022 – 10:05 pm
It is with great joy that the lovely Nina and I welcome to the world little Cooper Joseph Wright, our third grandchild, born today in Hong Kong. Mother (our daughter) and son are happy and well.
February 17, 2022 – 12:00 pm
Rush Limbaugh died a year ago today. Over at American Greatness, Christopher Flannery has published a remembrance. Read it here.
February 7, 2022 – 3:10 pm
Yes, Justin “Trudeau” is Fidel Castro’s son. This is about as obvious as it could be, and if you are wondering why those in power keep lying about this, I advise you to look up “Point deer, make horse”. If this is actually news to you, read this. (And as current events amply confirm, the […]
January 28, 2022 – 11:26 pm
It appears we are about to be blasted by the first serious winter storm of the season here in the Outer Cape – a potent nor’easter that’s undergoing “bombogenesis” as I write. The current predictions have us getting about two feet of snow between now and Sunday morning, with howling winds. I hope the power […]
December 31, 2021 – 6:42 pm
Best wishes to you all, and I hope we get some sanity back in 2022, though I won’t be betting on it. I’ll be revving up the blog in the New Year. I’ve been idle too long, and I’m starting to miss writing.
December 25, 2021 – 6:04 pm
All the best to each and every one of you — and thanks as always for coming by.
December 21, 2021 – 1:12 pm
Here’s a chart I requested from the CDC’s VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) website. (Keep in mind that these are totals for events from 1990 up to December 10th of this year, and that the COVID vaccines have only been around for 18 months or so.)
December 20, 2021 – 12:43 pm
I must apologize again for having so little on offer here lately. We’ve been distracted by personal matters, but I’ve also felt I have very little of value to say that I haven’t already said. This is as much due to laziness and indiscipline as to anything else, though: not-writing has a momentum of its […]
December 4, 2021 – 6:12 pm
From the UK Daily Standard: Up to 300,000 people facing heart-related illnesses due to post-pandemic stress disorder, warn physicians These stories are popping up all over. I wonder if there’s something else that could be responsible…
November 29, 2021 – 10:10 pm
Here we go: With the help of a supercomputer running AI software, boffins at an American university have created a new life-form they call “xenobots”, which are are tiny, motile blobs of tissue made from frog stem-cells. Under the guidance of the AI — which, as AIs tend to do these days, took off on […]
November 25, 2021 – 12:04 pm
This day, my favorite holiday of the year, is consecrated to remembering the vital importance of gratitude. Yes, things are not going well in America right now, but the story is far from over, and the strength of our good people is undiminished. Dum spiro spero!
October 29, 2021 – 6:38 pm
The lights are back on here on our little dirt road in Wellfleet, where the power had been out ever since the thrashing we got from that nor’easter on Tuesday night. We get a lot of these storms out here, but this was a pretty nasty one, and it knocked down an awful lot of […]
October 27, 2021 – 4:33 pm
We took quite a wallop from last night’s nor’easter here on the Outer Cape, with lots of trees down and widespread power outages. (I’m posting this with my phone.) We have no electricity, which means no heat, water, or internet. (I just got back from filling buckets at Long Pond.) Back when the lights come […]
October 20, 2021 – 10:32 pm
Well, we are slowly recuperating and establishing order. We are going through the daunting process of consolidating decades’ worth of accumulated possessions from two households into our modest dwelling here in Wellfleet, and it’s a slow go for the two of us, but we’re gradually getting there. There’s a lot going on in the world, […]
October 9, 2021 – 10:52 pm
Mission accomplished: we completed the move. It was a marathon on Thursday. The movers came at 7:30 a.m., loading the truck as Nina and I scrambled to make the place presentable for a final walk-through with the buyers at 1:30. We got on the road for Massachusetts about 2, with a plan to get to […]
October 6, 2021 – 12:33 pm
Well, this is it. Movers come at three today to pack, and early tomorrow we ship out. The lovely Nina and I have lived in this three-story house, on the park block of Ninth Street in Brooklyn, since March of 1982. We started out as tenants, then gradually took over the place. When the aging […]
September 26, 2021 – 10:28 pm
I lost a friend last Monday. His name was Alan Chevat. He was 72. I met Alan about twenty years ago when he came to study at the Yee’s Hung Ga kwoon in Brooklyn, where I was an instructor. We became friends right away. Alan was a very interesting man. He was Chief Attorney in […]
September 21, 2021 – 10:00 pm
Absolutely sickening news today: one of civilization’s great defenders, Angelo Codevilla, has died at the age of 78: struck and killed by a drunk driver as he walked home from church. Here is his author page at the Claremont Review of Books, and here is one of his most recent items, published at The American […]
September 14, 2021 – 4:47 pm
I wish Norm McDonald hadn’t died.
September 8, 2021 – 11:23 am
The lovely Nina and I, having sold the house in Brooklyn that we’ve lived in for almost 40 years, now have about three weeks to clear out of the place before closing with the buyers on or around September 30th. After a fantastic weekend of music in Maine, we are driving down to NY today […]
September 2, 2021 – 2:06 pm
I’m off to Maine for my annual musical retreat. (Used to be on Star Island, but now Maine for logistical reasons.) It’ll be good to push the world away for a minute and just make music with old friends. (These are the same folks I’ve been making those collaborative “lockdown’ videos with, for example this […]
August 22, 2021 – 1:38 pm
Well, Henri has come ashore well west of the Outer Cape, and while I’m sure there are some pretty nasty conditions in Connecticut, we’ve got nothing more out here than stiff breezes, perspiration-inducing warmth and humidity, and some rough surf. The sun is even shining, sort of.