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Hawthorn Hill

Hawthorn Hill
  • Gabby

    This is not an essay I want to write. We had to say good-bye to Gabby several weeks ago.

    September 20, 2012

  • Community

    We often make reference to the value of community. Unfortunately, of late it appears that what is perhaps our most important source of social and cultural cohesion is circling down the drain at a fast clip.

    August 23, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Rainy day thoughts

    I often wonder why it is that so many millions of dollars are spent on advertising, especially the daily spew of political ads splashed tsunami-like across the country hour by hour. I may be wrong, but I can not remember ever buying anything, or voting for anyone, because of an advertisement.

    July 12, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Rainy day thoughts

    I often wonder why it is that so many millions of dollars are spent on advertising, especially the daily spew of political ads splashed Tsunami like across the country hour by hour. I may be wrong, but I can not remember ever buying anything, or voting for anyone, because of an advertisement. About the closest we come is keeping an eye out for those discount coupon inserts often sandwiched between the sections of the daily newspaper that one actually reads – well, not always. Political analysts, a breed of cat I pay less and less attention to these days, seize on the these ads with an obsessive fervor that causes one to wonder how they might respond to matters of substance.

    July 3, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Dreaming Bobolinks

    Never one to shy from incongruence, both Bobolinks, one of my favorite birds, and the concept of American Exceptionalism have been flying parallel tracks in my mind the past several days. Actually, thinking about, even dreaming about, Bobolinks is far more pleasurable than wrestling with a jingoistic self-characterization that is both silly and morally indefensible.

    June 1, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Spring inventions

    The second line of Lawrence Durrell’s novel “Justine” reads as follows: “In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring.” I first read all four novels of his magnificent Alexandria Quartet during the year I traveled from Saigon to Paris after working in Vietnam for a refugee organization for several years.

    May 18, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: The past in the present

     Clichés abound about the value of photographs. Most are probably true at least to a certain extent. What I do know about an image is that it represents something of  the past that is not the pastitself. But that is the power of any image. It represents something that once was. The beauty of an image, revisited,  is that it functions as a catalystfor reliving in the present a past experience. My own view, one that I thank the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges for, is that all we ever can experience  is the present.

    March 9, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Quiet wisdom

    Reading is akin to a treasure hunt. There are surprises around every corner. Part of the fun, especially when reading fiction, is anticipating what might be next. Sometimes one guesses right and sometimes one is way off. But that is all right.

    February 23, 2012

  • Up On Hawthorn Hill: Bird Feeder?

    Bird feeder is a relative term. At least that is the case around here. A few mornings ago we spotted the first rabbit to visit the feeders. Normally, all we see during the winter are rabbit tracks crisscrossing the gardens.

    February 10, 2012

  • Up on Hawthorn Hill: Making sense of things

    A book I have been reading investigates the various ways over time that we have made sense of the world. It carries the reader through to the present via several seminal classical texts and ultimately aims to suggest a strategy for “ finding meaning in a secular age.”

    January 30, 2012