A walk around the block is enough to tell me how much, in these public lives we lead, we owe it to each other to make our own little contributions of neatness, order, and beauty. Everyone benefits from flowers, for instance, a bit of greenery, and a swept sidewalk. Even bare unplanted space that’s raked periodically and kept free of litter is a positive statement that’s good for the eye […]
The rise and fall. Doomed to fail are nations founded on the belief that people can take what they want, and sell what doesn’t belong to them. Likewise, individual lives. Throw it away. Out of sight, out of mind? Or, out of sight, out of our minds? Thoreau’s journal, February 19, 1854. Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little […]
If words had but one meaning, I would have died long ago and found no rest. Instead, I wept a while, and when it passed, I found this, my gravestone in the grass. It is a dictionary. And my name is filed neatly in the back, beneath Weights and Pleasures. These States Winter one day, fall the next, sparrows in beds of leaves, birch-bright colors float in cold stone […]
William Michaelian 