Prose

  • Final View About Jim

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    Final View About Jim I have shocking and sad news about Jim. Jim wrote this on Tuesday Dec. 17, 2024: I fell a month ago and broke my right elbow and right femur.  Just as I thought I was ready for another heroic comeback, my medical situation went south.  Surging bad pain in the arm…

  • Who Is Jim?

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    Who Is Jim? Here I am, known as Jim, smaller than a speck in this galaxy, which is smaller than a speck in this universe, a word that I’m tempted to capitalize because I might imagine it as god – – God – – much as Spinoza did, if I understand his ideas correctly. And…

  • Other Stuff

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    Stories  Not Suzanne The Teacher       She sat toward the back of the room the first day, so I didn’t notice her at first. After I made a seating chart she was near the front. I was struck by her. Not beautiful, but very attractive, at least to me. About average size, light and almost…

  • Graduate School

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                                                          Graduate School      We’d been living in Chicago, Gaynette and I, for a year, in a Rogers Park apartment, on the northern edge of the city half a block from Sheridan Road, which ran north-south just in from Lake Michigan. Rogers Park, we were told, was an old Jewish area, safe, close to the El…

  • Morality

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    Nature, it seems, has no morality, no built-in sense of right and wrongHumans do have morality. They do have notions of right and wrong.Therein lies the puzzle. Let’s put it another way. The ordinary human’s behavior, under some circumstances, is guided by a sense(belief) of moral correctness, of what is the good thing to do.…

  • The Chameleon

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    The Chameleon       In February, Ted looked at his course evaluations for the fall semester. He was an eternal optimist when it came to teaching. He had worked hard on that course, intending to improve it, make it more popular. The first comment he saw said that “the professor was boring and didn’t seem to…

  • Crime and Punishment

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    Crime and Punishment       I was hoping to get some more sleep, but the conversation intruded in a way that was irritating at first, then interesting. It was interesting because it was about such fundamental matters, matters that I had thought about, but always pushed aside because they seemed never to lead anywhere. But now…

  • Not Suzanne

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    Not Suzanne The Teacher       She sat toward the back of the room the first day, so I didn’t notice her at first. After I made a seating chart she was near the front. I was struck by her. Not beautiful, but very attractive, at least to me. About average size, light and almost translucent…

  • Early Years at NU

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    Early Years at NU       There were ups and downs, successes and failures, and a major foreign excursion packed into the late 60s and early 70s. The two notable items shortly before starting my long tenure at Northwestern were getting the job offer and getting my first child, Julie, who was born in Torrance Hospital…

  • Lucky Jim

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    Lucky Jim       Much of my thinking and writing has centered on the difficulties I experienced as a boy. Mixed in, but not sufficiently emphasized, were the strokes of good fortune, which perhaps might more accurately be termed the acts of kindness and assistance. Let me try to enumerate some of these.       First was…