Essays

Philosophical and Political 

Desert Variations

[Notes: February-March 2025] **I have moved to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, long-ago hangout for Ed Abbey and a botanically more abundant, diverse desert but without the fascinations of rock and floral creativity that I saw in Joshua Tree. (I spent five days there; it has the great misfortune of being popular and within easy driving distance of Los Angeles. Yosemite and San Francisco...

Living Towards Ends

Not long ago I wrote an essay[1] about what are called “existential risks,” aka “X-risks,” those calamitous possibilities (e.g., nuclear war, anthropogenic climate disruption, pandemic, and more, sometimes referred to collectively as the polycrisis) that are considered capable of rendering Homo sapiens extinct, or nearly so, and our present ways of life definitively so. I did not write about...

Aging: The Surprise

I awoke today preoccupied with thoughts about aging and its place in a life—Thoughts about aging as a phenomenon and as my experience and how it came on me as a surprise. I then moved to an obvious question: When does aging begin? (I know well enough when it ends.) My assumption is that it’s primarily a physical process with each step linked to mental accompaniments: emotions, interpretations,...
2022 The Northern Route – Aarhus

2022 The Northern Route – Aarhus

I have moved on to Odense tonight and Aarhus for the next two before going back to Copenhagen for my last night. Fortunately, I’m losing some of my zest for traveling or I’d be irritated at what the agent put together for my trip since leaving Norway. And even more so...

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2022 The Northern Route – Thoughts on History

15 October: My impression is that there’s a big difference between how people like the Danes and Americans deal with the shames and embarrassments of their history. I got no sense of pulling punches or in any way minimizing the evils perpetrated by Denmark in its...

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2022 The Northern Route – Denmark National Museum

2022 The Northern Route – Denmark National Museum

14 October: I spent the day in the National Museum, a place too abundant for me to cover adequately in a day. My back grows painful after standing for too long. But in addition to the astonishment of seeing so much gathered in a single place, I learned two interesting...

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2022 The Northern Route – Copenhagen

2022 The Northern Route – Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a noisier and dirtier city than the other capitals I’ve been in and definitely not as well maintained. But it has beautiful parks and I spent the better part of today in its botanical garden at the U. of Copenhagen. A wonderful place, just like the one...

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2022 The Northern Route – Malmo

2022 The Northern Route – Malmo

13 October: I managed to get the rental car dropped off in Malmo yesterday by only the grace of God or more likely good luck in finding a person who was very generous with his time and efforts to see that I got where I needed to be. I thought I had the route mapped...

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2022 The Northern Route – Gardens

2022 The Northern Route – Gardens

I was shocked and found it an interesting coincidence that I sat beneath it the first time I chose to just be present with all that was growing there, to silently admire the trees and other plants and feel the spirit of the place. The informational plaque beneath it...

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