Given that I was seven years old in 1968, I didn’t want to hear about college students dropping acid and prancing around nude in public places, or Muhammad Ali shouting, “I ain’t got no beef with them Viet Cong!” or the Soviet menace, or Richard Nixon, or Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, or Herman Hesse, or the […]
Several years ago, New York Jets safety Jamal Adams told a group of Jets fans, “If I had a perfect place to die, I would die on the field.” In response, Green Bay Packers tight end Martellus Bennett tweeted, “Look football is great but I ain’t dying for this shit. Lol.” This begs the question
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One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say. —Voltaire First World problems are things that bother people from wealthy countries that most Third Worlders would consider ridiculous. For instance, if you’ve been acting out over having to stand on public transportation, then you’re demonstrating a First World problem. If you just unfriended someone
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The Theravada Buddhist monk Ajahn Sona describes the mind as an untrained dog. You call it and it doesn’t pay attention. It wanders around and barks and scratches, and it’s completely unreceptive to your interaction, assuming you’ve actually gotten to the point where you can observe it instead of thinking that this untrained dog is
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Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature. The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove
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When Streetcar520 closed for indoor dining in March of 2020 due to statewide COVID-19 restrictions, owner Ari Knaup faced an intense battle for the restaurant’s survival. Streetcar was her invention, as much a work of art as it was a dining establishment. Three large, colorful murals of women adorned the walls, each one portraying a
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