Old Nestor Speaks

Nestor ~

In the Iliad, Nestor was the oldest Greek at the Siege of Troy. He looked upon the great Achilles, Ajax, and Diamedes as puny compared to his generation of heros at the Siege of Thebes…That was a real battle! So much for Homer’s view of cranky oldsters…

Requena: An Amazonian Adventure, June 2007

20 Sep at 1:04 pm

Requena is a little town of about 30,000 located 100 miles south of Iquitos on the Ucayali River. A placard over the tourist office claims it is “The Athens of…

Family Background

14 Sep at 11:59 am

In 1870, my father’s mother was born in Bergdorf, Switzerland. As a teenager, she migrated to Philadelphia where she met my grandfather, a plumber. He was the child of Irish…

Art and Religion

14 Sep at 8:44 am

All the great religions have produced great art. But just as Pascal argued that of all the religions, Christianity was most closely aligned with human nature, so I would argue…

On Going Blind

12 Sep at 3:58 pm

Isn’t it ironic that a person whose life was devoted to reading books and watching movies should near the end of his journey going blind? Over twenty-five years ago my…

Letter to Cornel West

12 Sep at 3:55 pm

Thomas Woodrow Wilson graduated from the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1879. In 1886, he was awarded a Ph.D. in history and government from Johns Hopkins University, then in…

Dr. Robert Lustig’s Metabolical*

12 Sep at 3:52 pm

Not since Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring (1962) has a book so alarmed and awakened me. Dr. Robert Lustig is Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California,…

Silver Linings Playbook – Rip van Winkle

12 Sep at 3:48 pm

Often when I go to the movies these days, I feel like Rip van Winkle as though I have awakened from a long sleep and find myself in an unfamiliar…