The Crevice on Christmas

Written over two days, the following is a literary present to myself. I hope others enjoy it. The Crevice on Christmas by Sean D. Francis The final days of the year happened to also be the coldest in the mountains of Montana.  The day after the solstice temperatures dropped so low new records were set.  …

A Mike Kruhl Story: Ask the Telephone

Mike Kruhl is my alter ego who was a golden age of science fiction writer. The stories… aren’t good, they are tongue-in-cheek, usually efforts to break out of a writing rut.  I hadn’t posted any fiction to the blog lately, so I dug this up, written in September 2007. Ask the Telephone “Bullpunk! The Cleveland …

The Art of Worldly Wisdom: 13

Very few people would claim Baltasar Gracian was simple.   Maxim 13 is a very complex tightly woven strategic sentiment.  This isn’t about philosophy per se, it is one of those sentiments that seems kind of Machiavellian or Sun-Tzu-ian.  In a different translation than the free one that I use for the purpose of this blog …

The Art of Worldly Wisdom: 12

It has been sometime since I visited the core purpose of this blog – the continued exploration of Baltasar Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. As a person who strongly believes philosophy plays a vital role in understanding our world, I rely heavily on the concept of ‘the state of nature’. In many ways I …