I am a strong believer in the liberal arts education. As an undergraduate, I took some courses with unusual titles, for example, "Delay of Gratification" and "Autonomy and Alienation". (Yes, these were their real names!) When I needed to take a break from my dissertation, I took a number of graduate seminars on topics such as scientific realism, human memory, and the interpretation of early Taoist scriptures.

The great American philosopher, William James, wrote in 1903 that "[t]he university most worthy of rational admiration is [the] one in which [a] lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed." I am very much a lonely thinker. Recently I have been savoring a philosophical novel, Night Train to Lisbon, written by Pascal Mercier, and reflecting upon Thoreau's quiet desperation and Nietzsche's amor fati.

The coronavirus pandemic, and the way we responded to it, have ravaged the world beyond recognition. That's why, some eighty years later, I am still finding Stefan Zweig's 1942 memoir, The World of Yesterday, closely relatable. Are we not, in one form or another, re-living his experiences all over again?!