THE PRACTICE OF WRITING

Albert Einstein:

The most important method of education … always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual performance. This applies as well to the first attempts at writing of the primary boy as to the doctor’s thesis on graduation from the university, or as to the mere memorizing of a poem, the writing of a composition, the interpretation and translation of a text, the solving of a mathematical problem or the practice of a physical sport.

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RESPECTING TRADITION AT THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM

Years ago, I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC shortly after it opened. I was overwhelmed by the different exhibits. The story told of that horrible time was both moving and profoundly depressing. I still remember details, especially the smell of leather when I entered a room where shoes of the murdered were collected. It’s interesting to me that olfactory memories are so pronounced.

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ON TURNING 70

As I approached my 70th birthday last week, I realized that 70 suddenly doesn’t seem all that old any more. Of course this is not a novel observation (I know I’m not the first person to reach this age – in fact, I remember my mother saying, when she was about as old as I am now, “But I don’t feel that old.” – and of course I’m able to think it’s not so old in large part because I’m lucky enough to be relatively healthy and active. While I’m not all that bothered by turning 70, It disturbs me just a bit more to think that in just a decade I’ll be 80. Somehow that’s more difficult to swallow.

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THE PAST IN THE PRESENT

Virginia Woolf:

The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. In those moments I find one of my greatest satisfactions, not that I am thinking of the past; but that it is then that I am living most fully in the present. For the present when backed by the past is a thousand times deeper than the present when it presses so close that you can feel nothing else, when the film on the camera reaches only the eye.

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SMELLS OF THE PAST

While bicycling along the Charles this past week, I smelled cigar smoke. The smell brought a smile to my face – or at least to my mind. It’s not that unusual while I’m out on my bicycle to smell the smoke of someone’s cigar. Usually – like this time – the person smoking the cigar is sitting on a bench by the trail. There was a time, though, while riding in northern Virginia that I began to smell the cigar several minutes before I overtook a man enjoying his smoke while riding leisurely on his bicycle – the smoke wafted behind him for a mile or so, and the smell got stronger and stronger the closer I got to him. I encountered him several times over the years, and usually smelled his cigar long before I saw him.

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THE COMPANIONSHIP IN READING

May Sarton:

I am drawn to people, for I am one myself, for whom literature is a passion, deep rather than wide readers, who discover the great works as Marc had discovered #Proust, feel themselves companioned by certain writers throughout a lifetime, follow every clue about the invention of characters in their books, one might almost say lead double lives.

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