In recent months, I have become friends with a man I met through one of my book clubs. He’s a bit older than I am, and a fellow of whom, after he joined the group, I very quickly got the sense that we have a great deal in common. A relatively recent retiree, still active on many fronts, his career path has led to both all corners of the planet and leadership positions in diverse industries. Not only are his manners and bearing beyond reproach, they seem grounded in a considered and considerate nature.

Notwithstanding our shared affinities, I am pretty sure that his politics and mine are diametrically opposed. I‘m guessing that he knows of our political differences, too, but we’ve both let the topic be...

Two days ago I slipped in some mud while carrying my kayak up a hill. I caught myself, but in doing so I seem to have hurt something deep in my right shoulder. Since then the right side of my torso has ached.

This morning, at the suggestion of my Beloved Spouse, I went outside to sit in the hot tub by our pool. I am not really a hot tub guy – I have probably used it a dozen times in as many years – but she thought the heat and bubble jets might help lessen my shoulder pain.

So I sat in the steaming water under a steel-gray sky; to my surprise, my thoughts turned to an old friend.

***

Doug and I went to boarding school together. We got to know each other through rowing; he was a big, athletic guy – a gentle giant. Though we were two years apart, we became fast friends.

For we were n...

The Internet is a tool of astonishing power, but it is not an unmixed blessing.

Its dangers were prefigured with amazing prescience in the 1940s by Tolkien’s palantir. Like a palantir, the web exerts a powerful draw by offering us the ability to see whatever we wish; but, also as when using a palantir, we are watched as well as watchers: the web tracks us and subtly guides what we see. It gives us the illusion of control, while denying us the reality of physical human contact. Its world is a shadow of our own.

The Internet is a two dimensional world, but we live in three dimensions (or rather, four, including the great limiter, time)...