Musings & Visions

All thinking men are Atheists.~Ernest Hemingway One of the indicators that a person will shed the shackles imprisoning them to religion is their level of education. College graduates are more likely than the less educated to identify as atheists or agnostics. It is why the strongly religiously inclined disparage universities that liberate the human mind and, lately, decry them with the latest…

The mind needs wild animals. The body needs the trek that takes it looking for them.~Ellen Meloy Not being a hunter, I do not generally enter the wilds seeking to find a specific animal. I tend to be content with any wildlife that graces my presence. Living in cities, I don’t have to scrutinize my surroundings for large predators capable of felling me in one swipe of a massive paw or a piercing…

01 Jul 2026 We are once again on our annual pilgrimage away from Chicago to insulate the dog from the near-ubiquitous fireworks in the big city that severely stress her canine sensibilities. This is our 7th year avoiding the city, the 3rd at a lovely cottage on an estate in Robinson, IL. We spent the first two at Brodhead, WI, an hour and a half from home, on a lake, in an Airbnb that is no…

We must all live in the full consciousness of the moment, and not in the one behind or before.~Frank Waters I was struck by a poignant thought last night while crossing the no man’s land between wakefulness and sleeping. I was hovering on that silken line beyond awake, before sleep, where all existence is concentrated in the immediate now, when this thought hit me. All we ever live in is the…

The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one-tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens gangs up to 70 percent of its sense receptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger and recognize reward, but also—more so—for beauty.~Ellen Meloy I wonder what the impetus was that shifted the human mind to alter vision solely to…

When you truly understand one thing – a hawk, a juniper tree, a rock – you will begin to understand everything.~Ellen Meloy As a lifelong learner, I want to know everything about everything. Well, that’s my North Star goal that guides my mind. I know it is impossible, given that we can’t know anything that isn’t yet discovered about life, the universe, and everything. Learning is a process, a…

When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.~Arundhati Roy When I was a young lad, the only ginger in my neighborhood and schools, making me a target, altercations arose between mismatched combatants that generally used words as weapons, with occasional flare-ups into fisticuffs. We attempted to ward off those words…

Wilderness areas are reservoirs of freedom. Like the few remaining free-flowing rivers, they are among the last places where a person can escape the pressures of an increasingly regulated and regimented society. Without them, there would be no place left for that last wild thing—the free human spirit. ~Raymond Dasmann The USA’s most enduring mythology, one the citizenry loves to chest-thump, is…

To seek harmony is to seek truth, and truth seekers have always had a rough go of it in this world.~Richard Wagamese I adhere to a strict policy of truth. Much of my adult life has been invested in seeking truth in both my professional and personal lives. This is heavily influenced by my belief that truth will not only set society free of tyranny, but it also begets a clarity that positively…

I am human and I need to be lovedJust like everybody else does~The Smiths Love is quite possibly the most intense emotion humans experience, equalled in intensity by its opposite, hate, a form of negative love. Alternatively, Love is a form of strong positive care, while Hate is a strong negative care. Hate is not a negation of love but an emotional hole that consumes love as a black hole…

We teach that purpose doesn’t come from the gods but from ourselves. That the gods can show us good resources and good ideas, but the work and the choice – especially the choice – is our own. Deciding on your purpose is one of the most valuable things there is.~Becky Chambers If I had to hazard a guess, I would say one of the oldest conundrums pinging humanity’s consciousness is the simple…

We do not need a new religion or a new Bible. We need a new experience – a new feeling of what it is to be “I.”~Alan Watts Not only do we not need a new religion or Bible, we no longer need, never actually needed, the old religion or Bible. In fact, we would be much better off had they, and other holy tomes, never cursed the human condition by driving people to believe their contents are true…

Man shall have dominion…over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.~Genesis 1:26 The Bible can and has been ‘interpreted’ to justify everything from chattel slavery to genocide to sanctioned rape of virgins to dashing babies on rocks…along with a smattering of niceties such as love thy neighbor, the meek shall inherit the earth, and forgiving transgressors 70 times 7 times. This is…

I’m older now and quiet feels better on the bones than noise.~Richard Wagamese Twas a season in my life when I was energized and invigorated by loud music and parties attended by many, with a heavy flow of alcohol lubricating social interactions and, maybe, a late-night tête-à-tête with a member of the opposite sex. Some of the best times took place at my parents’ summer estate, a two-bedroom…

The pursuit of knowledge must lead to freedom of the mind and freedom of the soul.~John F. Kennedy It is a travesty that the richest country in the world ranks a paltry 20th in quality of education on the global scale. That our traditional adversaries in China and Russia are ranked higher does not augur well for an impressive future. There are a couple of factors leading to the embarrassing…

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.~Norman Cousins I find it intriguing that death as a beginning is a belief held vigorously by both religious sects and the zombies amongst us. Two querlous groups, both looking beyond the immediate toward a future that may or may not have any basis in cold reality. I wonder how the zealots rationalize…

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. ~Dr. Seuss, I Can Read WIth My Eyes Shut!   Last year, when I received an iPad as a gift from my kids, little did I know that it would become an almost constant companion in my life and a game changer. One of the first apps I downloaded was the Kindle reader for I made a promise to myself…