“They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never hea...

[At eighty] “One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perha...

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the super natural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life – achieving a sense of peace within onesel...

History says / Don’t hope on this side of the grave / But then, once in a lifetime / The longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme. Seamus Heaney I have really struggled to think of an overarching topic for this...