The fact of my retirement has not diminished in me a bothersome lifelong impulse – the impulse to write about topics that no one else in the world seems to care about.

These pages will give a home to the near worthless output driven by that impulse.

I have divided the worthless output into arbitrary categories:

   • Dialectic through stories and other reflectionsAn attempt to expose dialectic through story, and then to raise it to the level of ideas through reflection, where it will probably once again vanish.

   • The Hut in the Middle of the ForestAn attempt to find the nature and meaning of a common poetic image. Follows a hint from Gaston Bachelard, French Philosopher.

   • Charles B Shaver's GenealogyDuring the 1950's Charles B Shaver, my grandfather, researched and wrote a genealogy of the Shaver family. This is an electronic version of his work.

   • PretencePretence is a strategy used by the likes of insects, mollusks, and plants. But it also used by artists in every field. Why is pretence more useful than fidelity?

   • OblivionSometimes Oblivion is taken to be a mere linguistic negative of memory. But Oblivion deserves its own altar within the pantheon. Let's begin the work.

   • Translations and Notes on ReadingsTranslations that I thought should be done. Also some Useful Greek word lists.

You might suppose that a survey of other impulsive behavior would leave me thankful, or even proud, that my particular impulsive behavior is not destructive. But I know that it is.

—jhs