mistaking paradise
notes from the home across the road


Wednesday, April 14, 2004
my wardrobe has three broad color schemes: brown, blue and grey. i wear baseball hats to shade my head and eyes. my three kids went to very different colleges, and i have a baseball hat from each one. by chance, they are the perfect color complements for my wardrobe. call me a lucky dad: when i wear blues, i use the blue hat with "slugs" in gold lettering from santa cruz; when i wear greys, i use the black hat with a red "w" from wesleyan; and when i wear browns, i use the green hat with the yellow "h" from humboldt.


Wednesday, April 07, 2004
how long till iraq follows it's near neighbors among the ranks of newly "liberated" countries that split apart along strict ethnic or religious boundaries? if the past two decades have taught us anything it is that try as we might in the west to encourage everyone to just get along and focus on a collaborative social future, all across the globe petty differences explode overnight into national boundaries between discrete social herds of partisans who refuse to cooperate with their neighbors. it's almost as if there is a chaotic teenage phase a nation group has to pass through before it can mature into members of the civilised world. why do we wander so long in the wilderness? is it just an absence of visionary leaders of the stature of a mandela? or is it a doom long foretold where natural laws of the bent world tempt the minds of the many with dangerous delusions?