Author: philipc

Who is that?

It was in a mirror, at some time, in some place, that the first act of recognition occurred, the point when man stared into the ocean, saw his face in its infinity, grew anxious, and began to ask, ‘Who is that?…’ Sándor Marái, Casanova in Bolzano

purifying winter sun

A winter prairie morning sun, smoothing the blush of first light, has a purifying radiance that chills and freezes. It performs the same task as the burning coals of a smelting fire, or the salty brine of an equatorial coast. It refines all that it touches, preserves and separates all that is essential in the..

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Springtime…at last

Spring arrives late in a northern city. My mother always said one couldn’t plant before the Victoria Day Weekend…the third weekend of May. I miss the wonderful springtime in Bavaria, which lingers between the thick-laden snows and the delicate summer alpine meadows. But it has come at last to my part of the world, and..

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Crisis and the common good

Near the end of WWII, when the world was going through a shock of another kind, Charles de Koninck wrote: A society composed of individual persons who esteem their private good above the common good, or who confuse the common good with the private good of each conceived as a sort of singular thing, as..

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Blue Monday

Blue Monday is today… the “bluest” day of the year. To combat it, I’ve looked up an old friend… Dick Francis and his murder-mysteries. I’m curling up today and reading Odds Against. Slipping into another world from that of the slate-skied, deep winter prairies. Only wish I had a fireplace!