Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are

Most Of The Time I Am Sunk In Thought, But At Some Point On Each Walk There Comes A Moment When I Look Up And Notice, With A Kind Of First-time Astonishment, The Amazing Complex Delicacy Of The Words, The Casual Ease With Which Elemental Things Come Together To Form A Composition That Is—whatever The Season, Wherever I Put My Besotted Gaze—perfect.

There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't Be Able To Split An Infinitive, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.

The Upshot Of All This Is That We Live In A Universe Whose Age We Can't Quite Compute, Surrounded By Stars Whose Distances We Don't Altogether Know, Filled With Matter We Can't Identify, Operating In Conformance With Physical Laws Whose Properties We Don’t Truly Understand.

If You Go Out On The Appalachian Trail, You Have To Bring So Much More Equipment - A Tent, Sleeping Bag - But If You Go Hiking In England, Or Europe, Generally, Towns And Villages Are Near Enough Together At The End Of The Day You Can Always Go To A Nice Little Inn And Have A Hot Bath And Something To Drink.

Very Little Of What America Does Is Actually Bad, And I Don't Think It Ever Does Anything Anywhere That Is Intentionally Bad. I Mean, Sometimes We Make Mistakes And Bad Judgments And Kind Of Back The Wrong Regimes And Things, But By And Large What America Does Is Really Good.