Tag Archives: solitude

The Bed, the Bath, the Bus—and the Motorcycle: Where Craig Venter Gets His Ideas

Thinkers tend to refer to the “bed, the bath, and the bus” as places where they get their ideas, and Virginia Woolfe famously wrote of the need for a room of one’s own. Likewise, Daniel Dennett recently praised his morning … Continue reading

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Creative and Critical Thinking Watch: Susan Cain on the Power of Solitude

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Charles Darwin’s Thinking Path

I love this image from Wikipedia Commons. It’s the path that Charles Darwin frequently trod at the grounds of Down House, his home. Darwin called this his “Thinking Path.”

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Entering the Twilight Zone via Solitude and Day Dreaming, and Maybe Meeting the Devil (or Rod Serling)

Last week, I wrote a meditative piece on the role that solitude plays in the life of the mind, and how I felt it to be akin to entering Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (see here). I suggested that if you expose … Continue reading

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Sandra Foster, a Female Thoreau: A Little House of Her Own

Virginia Woolf once wrote of the great human need, for intellectual and emotional flourishing, of having a room of one’s own. And the New York Times today has a profile of a 40-something woman, Sandra Foster, who has built her own … Continue reading

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Solitude: How to Expose Yourself to the Twilight Zone for Real

This past weekend I was thinking about the importance of solitude to the life of the mind, and it occurred to me that it is useful to think of solitude as a place of exposure. Solitude, in other words, is where we … Continue reading

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Catholic Priest, Father James Martin, fails to see the beauty of a fast moving woman in New York City

Catholic priest, James Martin, offers this incident as illustration of the richness of (his) existence that our plugged-in culture is bypassing: Not long ago, I was walking through a park in New York City. Racing across Union Square to an … Continue reading

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Garrison Keillor Wants to Be Alone

At Salon.com this week, Garrison Keillor writes on the bliss of solitude: New York is a fine place in which to be alone. To walk into a little cafe with an armload of newspapers and sit at the counter and … Continue reading

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Image of a Woman, in Solitude, Reading a Letter

Solider. Mother. Father. Son. Lover. Husband. Friend. Daughter. Sister. Brother. Stranger. Clergyman. Aquantance. Who is the letter from? Is she reading a letter sent to her, or spying words sent to another? In her solitude, as she reads, does she hear the person’s voice in her head? Is … Continue reading

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California Gay Marriage Hysteria Watch: Dennis Prager Suggests That Gay Marriage Is Worse Than Anything in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”

On May 20, 2008, radio celebrity Dennis Prager, in an article posted on his website titled “California Decision Will Radically Change Society,” asserted that gay marriage is something even worse than the things described by Aldous Huxley in his distopian novel Brave New … Continue reading

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