dailyprompt
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I shall begin with a novel I’ve already read three times and plan to traverse again. For me, John Irving’s “A prayer for Owen Meany” ranks as a quintessential modern classic. Irving turns humor, irony, and dysfunction into pure poetry. There is no character, in modern and classic literature, quite like Owen Meany. Next, is…
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I get poked fun at every time I mention it as my favorite Olympic sport. But what the hell: Cross Country Skiing! There’s something about swishing through a snow-covered, pristine wilderness, combined with target shooting, that hits me the right way. If you haven’t done so, check out this concert, The Universe in Keys 04/01/2025,…
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Ever since the advent of the twenty-four-hour-a-day cable news cycle, America has altered her visual trajectory: we no longer look inward at are communities; all eyes, since the late 1990s, are focused on Washington D.C.; it’s up with macro and down with micro. The result? Communities have gone uncared for, reduced to localities our houses…
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A limerick from the first season of The Crown: There once was a girl named Sally Who never said “no” to a dally And when she sat on the lap of a well-endowed chap She cried, “Sir, you are right up my alley!” Another from the late Christopher Hitchens: It was said of the Bishop…
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The art of foreign policy is a good guy, making a deal with a bad guy, to get rid of a worse guy. The dilemma? Can the “good guy” live with an ideologically misaligned “bad guy” as a bedfellow? Perhaps as important: do we know for sure who‘s who? It’s always more complex and nuanced…
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The above is what I ride. I’ve always had Cannondale’s; there’re terrific bikes and handmade right here in America. I always dreamed of cycling across the country. Back when my legs were capable of making the journey, it would’ve required a six-week vacation. Now that I can afford the time, my legs would prove stubbornly…
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Years ago, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson teamed up for the second time in a film called The Remains of the Day. Hopkins plays the head butler; Thompson plays the head house maid. Their sexual tension is palpable but Hopkins character, Mr. Stevens, puts duty above all else and won’t entertain a relationship. Meanwhile, they…
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Dear Michael, Stop what you’re doing, go to a mirror, look into it, and say thank you: Thank you for all the hikes, bike rides, and runs. Thank you for all the times you shook off the stress and adversity life unfailingly offers and exercised your way to a clear head. Thank you for understanding…
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My goodness, we are a complex and peculiar species, and I have lived nary a day without contributing to our complexities and peculiarities; I am a living breathing manifestation of all that’s wondrous and weird—a shiny thread in a quilt of ever-expanding madness, enriched by every encounter that has accounted for my miserly endowment of…
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Fate? Destiny? Who doesn’t enjoy grappling with issues and questions sure to induce a sneer from Richard Dawkins and a grin from Jordan Peterson? Once when asked, “Do you believe there is a God?” Jordan Peterson replied, “I live as though I do.” It was the perfect answer. Destiny, spirituality, and the deific: they tend…
Michael's Corner 