• Thanks-giving

    Friends, a couple of thoughts for Thanksgiving Day. What does it mean that we are all going to die, and none of us know just when? Yes, it means “eat dessert first,” but is that the limit of the conclusions we can draw? If I were to die today (and it won’t be any different…

  • Ready to eat!

    Orphans’ Dinner at the New Land — set up for 18 people whose families are elsewhere. This year, as last year, I cooked the turkey and dressing and provided the space.

  • China furious at Dalai Lama plan to name successor

    Amazing hypocrisy on China’s part. They no more believe in reincarnation than they do in political or economic liberty, so they attack the Dalal Lama for violating “the religious rituals and historical conventions.” This, after they have spent half a century actively trying to elminate both! This, after they arrested (and for all we know…

  • Pottery Show!

    Nan Rothwell’s studio is in Nelson County, Virginia, quite near where I live. For the past several months I have been enjoying being in one of her pottery classes. This weekend and next she is holding her annual exhibition/sale, and I thought I’d show a couple of photos. The first two photos are of the…

  • Messenger: A Sequel to Lost Horizon

    Long ago (1979) and far away (New Jersey, where I was then living) I began writing a novel, a sequel to James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. I was wild about Hilton’s book, re-reading it often, feeling in my bones that this is a book about something real. But Lost Horizon was written in 1932, before the…

  • Messenger Chapter 01

    Messenger: A Sequel to Lost Horizon By Frank DeMarco   Dedicated to: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, admirable representative of his people, a man upon whom hatred has no hold. Having, of all mankind, reason to be bitter, the Dalai Lama lives serene. He smiles. And to Danny Lliteras, author of the Llewellen trilogy: In…

  • Messenger Chapter 02

    Chapter Two. The Monastery Late the following morning, Mr. Barnard found me lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, wondering how long the trek back would take. Provided the place wasn’t an elaborate Chinese trap, I figured I’d stumbled into probably the only place in Tibet that would help me get back over the…

  • Messenger Chapter 03

    Chapter Three. Introductions I had a long winter and spring ahead of me before I could try to get over the mountains to India, and the monastery was not so large a place to roam. I soon used up its spaces. I’d get up in the morning—after sleeping as late as possible and then lying…

  • Messenger Chapter 04

    Chapter Four. Realities “It’s me, all right. The name Bryant that he says is my right name ain’t the right one, but if you knew where to look, you’d find the old news stories about me quick enough. Not that it matters: The statutes of limitations don’t run any 30 years, and anyway it wouldn’t…

  • Jung on terrorism and awareness

    When a man of wisdom speaks, and his words continue to ring true after more than half a century, maybe it would be a good idea to listen. This is from “A Study in the Process of Individuation,” in Carl Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Conclusion Our series of pictures illustrates the initial…