Almost every individual person is educable. I’ll define educable as being capable of learning from the mistakes of others. Likewise, almost every individual is corrigible. Corrigible means capable of learning from one’s own mistakes. Institutions, like individuals, are educable. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: March 2014
Blog 52. Aging in America—a systems question?
Last week, I reviewed Julian Barnes’ story of an aging, retired man named Tony Webster. Webster lives alone, remembers regrettable events of his youth, suffers remorse when he encounters the living and ghostly persons of his past, and still does not find a way to heal the hurts or to generate meaning in his life. Perhaps, as his former girlfriend says, he “just doesn’t get it.”
Does today’s youth-oriented culture—a functioning system—regard older people as irrelevant, as those who no longer “get it?” Continue reading
Blog 51. Book report: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes
This existential novella presents two parts of a life story and an unspoken questioning of life itself. Continue reading
Blog 50. Principles and hubris
We all live by principles—at least, most of us think we do. Principles are not necessarily lofty. Continue reading
Blog 49. A refuge for what?
Of all the newsletters that cross my desk, the one that tugs my heart comes from the Friends of the San Luis Valley National Wildlife Refuges. That heart-tug pulls back to my youth there, hunting rabbits and ducks on that land when it was wetlands and grassland, long before it was a nearly-dry refuge pumping groundwater to maintain some of its habitat. Continue reading