Poem for a Sunday Morning

Questions Before Dark{Jeanne Lohmann} Day ends, and before sleepwhen the sky dies down, consideryour altered state: has this daychanged you? Are the cornerssharper or rounded off? Did youlive with death? Make decisionsthat quieted? Find one clear wordthat fit? At the sun’s midpointdid you notice a pitch of absence,bewilderment that invitesthe possible? What did you learnfrom

Poem for a Sunday Morning

from “Vacillation” {W.B. Yeats} My fiftieth year had come and gone, I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my

‘Essential’ is a Choice

Most of us don’t meet the government’s definition of “essential” when it comes to working the front lines of the response to the novel corona virus. Most of us, that is, are deemed “non-essential.” And we who are “non-essential” have been given a very short and manageable to-do list: wash your hands, stay at home

#44 – The Greater Good

“Social distancing” “Hunker down” “Self-isolate” “Flatten the curve” I did not plan to include “The Greater Good” on my list of “50 Ideas Worth Fighting For” but it’s never been made more real or more important to fight for it than right now. Yes, it’s possible that we are already too late, that a surge of

#38 – Competence

It’s worth fighting for more competent leaders. You don’t tolerate incompetence from your doctor or your accountant but do you feel the same about your leaders? Maybe you think that effective leadership is that much harder to measure than the successful treatment of an illness or the filing of a tax return. I don’t buy