Category: Autobiographical
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Julien Green’s Diary, 1928-1957
It arrived yesterday evening, and I am already 32 pages into it. Why keep a journal? Green gives an answer on page one in the entry from 4 December 1928. He tells of "the incomprehensible desire to bring the past to a standstill that makes one keep a diary." Reading that, I knew I would…
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AI, Intellectual Theft, and Lawsuits
A year or two ago I was bumping along at about one thousand page views per diem when I experienced an unusual uptick in traffic. Inspection of the MavPhil traffic log suggested that my content was being stolen. But I didn't much care, and I still don't much care inasmuch as my content has very…
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Alligator Alcatraz
Leftist environmentalists are bringing suit to block the construction of a detention center for illegal aliens in the heart of the Everglades. This should interest Sarasota resident and fellow philosopher Elliott Ruffin Crozat who paid me a visit over the last three days. You can imagine the 'orgy' of philosophizing that took place, both peripatetically…
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A Marital Memory from the ‘Nineties
I had dropped her off at Sky Harbor on a Thursday. She was headed to a conference. I said, "You'll miss Seinfeld." She said, "I'll miss you!" (Seinfeld episodes, the original series, were aired on Thursday nights.) As our 42nd anniversary approaches, I recall the incident with deep love and gratitude. She has probably forgotten…
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The Fall of Saigon
Fifty years ago today. I wrote in my journal (30 April 1975): Saigon was overrun by the communists today. 150 billion dollars and 50,000 American lives wasted during the war. 58,00 is now the standardly cited figure. Goeffrey Wawro, The Vietnam War: A Military History (Basic Books, 2024, 652 pp.): The war had killed 58,000…
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The Calvin Blocker Story
My wife and I owned a house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Euclid Heights Boulevard, from 1986-1991. That location put me within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. The Coventry district was quite a Bohemian scene in those days and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one…
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Socratic Progress
The older I get the more I realize how little I know, even about subjects I have long pondered. That realization is progress of a sort. We might call it Socratic progress, progress in the knowledge of one's ignorance.
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How Much Bad Behavior Ought We Tolerate from Our ‘Friends’?
The following arrived on Christmas Eve: Apatheia, Ataraxia, and Holiday Spirit I was wondering if you had any advice for those struggling to maintain their Stoic calm as Christmas approaches. Alas, I am one of those souls this year. I will not burden you with the details, but it seems the holidays also bring out…
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A Strange Experience
A Substack tale haunting but true.
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Site Stats at Sweet Sixteen
Although Maverick Philosopher has been on-line for over 20 years now, its third incarnation, this Typepad version, first saw the light of day on Halloween, 2008, 16 years ago. I thank you for reading. Although the heyday of blogging is long gone, the peak having occurred near the end of the aughts, I bump along…
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My Grunt Jobs
Furniture mover in Santa Barbara; exterminator in West Los Angeles; grave digger in Culver City; factory worker in Venice, California; letter carrier and mail handler in Los Angeles; logger in Forks, Washington; tree planter in Oregon; taxi driver in Boston; plus assorted day jobs out of Manpower Temporary Services in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and…
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Am I an Intellectual Glutton? Evdokimov, Jackson, Precepts, and Counsels
Study everything! proclaims the first half of my masthead motto. I live by it. Am I an intellectual glutton? The self-critical and conflicted Tom Merton asked himself that very question in a journal entry. I put the question to myself. Example. I am up from a nap and enjoying an iced coffee. I will soon…
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A Platonist at Breakfast
Amazing what one can unearth with the WayBack Machine. This one first saw daylight on 3 March 2005. ………………………… I head out early one morning with the wife in tow. I’m going to take her to a really fancy joint this time, the 5 and Diner, a greasy spoon dripping with 1950's Americana. We belly…
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Happiness
I am happy. I am living my kind of life in my kind of way, the life I envisaged and aspired to when I was 20 years old and wrote in my journal, "To live a philosophical life in a tumultuous, uncertain world is my goal." I am pulling it off, and have been for…
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How to Roast Yourself in Five Different Ways
Substack latest.