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Amazing Conversations

All my life I’ve heard the expression: a photograph doesn’t lie. But the real truth is that photographs do in fact lie about some things, and not about others. Is this what Diane Arbus meant when she wrote, “A photograph is a secret about a secret?”

Questions Of Lifestyle

Voluntary simplicity has gained popularity since the late Sixties. Of course the idea is at least as old as the first religions, but nowadays voluntary simplicity is not practiced for overtly religious reasons. A cynic might say that a sense of reparation for damages done is driving some to practice a new spirit of self-denial. It touches most strongly, after all, the descendants of the adventurous, progressive pioneers from Western Europe who invaded this country a few centuries ago. In any case, exploitation is a touchstone by which many of us gauge our use of toilet paper, gasoline, rubber, washing machines, nylon, coffee, newspaper and on and on.

Hard Labor

Thoreau And The Meaning Of Work

More than any other commonplace notion, Thoreau attacked (largely through satire) his fellows’ commonplace notions about work. “Economy” is the first and largest chapter of Walden, and Thoreau gives the subject such primary consideration because he saw work consuming people’s lives before they had much of a chance to live, before they had enough time to reflect on the relationship of work to life for themselves. To Thoreau, the problem of finding one’s right work and integrating it into other proper demands on one’s life was a challenge that needed to be tackled early and with great energy if young adults weren’t going to step blindly into traps that were indeed much easier to step into than to get out of.

Photographs By Lewis Downey

The photographs from this selection are available as a PDF only.

God Bless The Child

Compassion filled the car with a tangible presence. He was dying; but it seemed to me they had all come to terms with it. All three of them had accepted the inevitable, and each moment together was precious. Neither I nor my saxophone would be forgotten.

The Reader Behind The Writer

A great masterpiece might sit there beside some obscure and shoddy effort. Schools and universities told you what books were great and worthy and famous; a library sat there mutely and let you decide.

I Want To Be A Machine

Gold And Black

Then he turns to me, and direct as an arrow says, “You gonna be there?” (This, I thought, is what they refer to in books as “the moment of truth.”) My heart was creeping up my esophagus like an inchworm; but my tongue would not unwind.

The Library

The library is a trap; it is the subversion of secrecy; it is the first and best sanctuary of the life of the mind

Sunbeams

Worse than war is fear of war.

Seneca