JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #24

I had a long conversation the other day with “G” (the person addressed in #23). The main point of discussion was the possibility of a second American civil war breaking out in the near future, and what could be done to avert it. G., by the way, is a former...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 23

Text of an email i sent to a friend. His name has been deleted. G: I would describe myself as “cautiously pessimistic” about the country’s future, short-term and long-term. Pessimism comes almost naturally to me, mostly because I’ve seen too...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 22

About 25 years ago, I started to study Stoicism, the philosophy founded in Athens  in the 3d century B.C. by the Greek thinker, Zeno of Citium, developed by his pupils, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and carried on during the first and second centuries A.D. by Romans like...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #21

We celebrated the welcome demise of 2020 in a manner befitting a plague year — all dressed up with nowhere to go. But we had a good time all by ourselves: martinis before dinner, a fine old vine Zin with filet mignon and roast potatoes, followed by dancing to...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 20

I haven’t posted for several weeks for a couple of reasons: one, until two weeks ago, I was busy finishing the first draft of a new novel, an effort that left me too mentally depleted to write so much as a shopping list; two, I was recovering from a concussion...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 19

We here in Connecticut are learning to live with Covid19. While the virus is not our friend, we seem to have reached some sort of rapprochement with it. Most the state’s citizens wear masks in public places and observe social distancing mandates, without feeling...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR # 18

No Covid news today, but I have a suggestion: To prevent the next presidential debate (if there is one) from becoming a mudbath like last night’s, President Trump should be fitted with a shock collar, similar to the kind used to train and discipline dogs. A...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #17

Warm, clear, and breezy, Friday was very much like THE September 11 of nineteen years ago, and seemed an appropriate day to commemorate the dead. Leslie and I sailed out to Green’s Ledge lighthouse in her little sloop, Reveille, with her sister, Jennifer, our...

JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #16

I recently received an email from someone who had read “The Longest Road”, the book I published several years ago describing an overland voyage Leslie and I made from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean. The purpose of that...