The Great Cycle Challenge, that is! — This year will be my third year to participate in the Great Cycle Challenge (GCC). What is GCC? I’ll summarize below; you can find detailed information at this page. Two summers ago, my good friend Mike McIntyre helped me move into my current apartment after I sold my home. …

Introduction Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. Robert Frost On July 6, 2023, Earth experienced its highest global average temperature ever recorded. And it seems likely, with more than an 80% probability, that 2023 itself will go down as the hottest year in the National…

The bottom line of this essay — literally — is a YouTube performance of Franz Biebl’s arrangement of the Ave Maria and a copy of the score. If you just want to view these and skip the intervening thousand words of commentary, jump to the bottom. …

Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A girl with kaleidoscope eyes Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Lennon/McCarthy Released June 1, 1967 In the 18th century, while searching for comets, French astronomer Charles Messier compiled…

I have just returned from the Summer North American Bridge Championships (NABC), hosted at the Rhode Island Convention Center (RICC) in Providence, RI. The tournament spanned an 11–day interval from Wednesday, July 13 through Sunday, July 24. I drove up from my home in Broomall on Thursday the 14th and…

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all…

The Great Cycle Challenge, that is! This year, I will for the second time participate in the Great Cycle Challenge. What is GCC? I’ll summarize the detailed information given at this page below. Last summer, my good friend Michael McIntyre helped me move into my current apartment after I sold…

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. Philip K. Dick Dick was an American science fiction writer whose novels and short stories often depict the psychological struggles of characters in surrealistic situations. He is perhaps best known popularly for his 1964 novel Do Androids…

Hanging in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, van Gogh’s remarkable The Starry Night is described in part by this MoMA excerpt: In creating this image of the night sky — dominated by the bright moon at right and Venus at center left — van Gogh…