Author Archives: John Swinburn

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes

Another Little Trip to the Rock

Posted on March 2, 2020 by John Swinburn

Here I am on the edge of a dull, dreary, overcast day, readying myself for yet another trip to Little Rock. This trip’s sole purpose is to visit a lab for a blood draw, ordered by my wife’s primary care … Continue reading →

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Surprise Memories

Posted on March 1, 2020 by John Swinburn

Years ago, when I was executive director of an association then called the International Association of Auditorium Managers (now International Association of Venue Managers), I had an awful experience. We were in the midst of our annual conference when an … Continue reading →

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Perils of Finding Solace in Food

Posted on February 29, 2020 by John Swinburn

When my concerns are too personal and too emotional to share with those closest to me—even with myself—I tend to turn my thoughts to food. It’s no mistake that the word “comfort” is so often associated with food. Whether a … Continue reading →

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Here and Now

Posted on February 28, 2020 by John Swinburn

Time and distance no longer matter when the only moment is now and the only place is here. Memories lose their grip on the soul at that juncture. All existence takes place in the present; neither the past nor the … Continue reading →

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Preppers and COVID-19

Posted on February 27, 2020 by John Swinburn

Preppers, or survivalists, prepare for a broad spectrum of emergencies: disruptions in the food supply, civil unrest, tainting of the supply of potable water, cataclysmic weather events…and on and on. Lately, talk of the novel (new) coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has … Continue reading →

Posted in Covid-19, Health | 3 Comments

Video-Fest

Posted on February 26, 2020 by John Swinburn

I spent the better part of three hours this morning watching short (i.e., under 6 minute) TED Talk videos. The purpose of my viewing-spree was to find videos I can use to support facilitating a conversation about how seemingly mundane … Continue reading →

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Not Everything, But Something

Posted on February 25, 2020 by John Swinburn

Yesterday afternoon, I met with a woman to discuss a church-managed program that provides a technological resource to impoverished kids. The kind of resource isn’t important to this post. What is important is what I learned from the conversation. The … Continue reading →

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A Swarm of Misconceptions?

Posted on February 23, 2020 by John Swinburn

Gazing out across open water to the horizon, where the sun is setting, the idea that there is a place where the Earth touches the sky is easy to accept. It’s right there in plain view. A crisp, clear line … Continue reading →

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Hand Injury in a Writing Accident

Posted on February 21, 2020 by John Swinburn

I am trying my hand at dictating the post this morning because my right hand is in absolute agony when I move it in certain ways. And sometimes when I don’t. My guess is that it is carpal tunnel syndrome, … Continue reading →

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A Diverse Dreamworld

Posted on February 20, 2020 by John Swinburn

Achieving cultural diversity is much deeper and more complex than mixing skin colors, languages, and customs. Real diversity is attained by blending every element of different societies, yet maintaining the uniqueness of each component. It consists of embedding an understanding … Continue reading →

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Distortion

Posted on February 19, 2020 by John Swinburn

Consider how radically different your life would have been if you had been adopted in 1962 by a Chinese peasant couple who traveled to the United States from their rural home outside the tiny village of Zhongxin in Guizhou Province, … Continue reading →

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The Upper Edge of Anything Hollow

Posted on February 18, 2020 by John Swinburn

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to document something I wrote for another post I subsequently discarded. I liked this little snippet from that post, but didn’t like the rest. Maybe I’ll use this sometime … Continue reading →

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Chiselers

Posted on February 17, 2020 by John Swinburn

I don’t remember where I came across the word “chiseler” in the past day or so, but the word stuck with me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone speak the word since I heard my father use it many, … Continue reading →

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A Short and Cynical Critique of Society

Posted on February 17, 2020 by John Swinburn

We sometimes fail to see massive changes in society because they occur in response to much smaller—seemingly innocuous—changes. For example, governments at all levels, over time, began to mimic customer service practices originally initiated by businesses. The idea was to … Continue reading →

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Insignificant Expectations

Posted on February 16, 2020 by John Swinburn

David Copperfield and Great Expectations both were written in the first person. Neither novel, nor their plot lines, have anything to do with what’s on my mind this morning. But, like most of what I write, relevance often is out … Continue reading →

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Musing on Health and Such

Posted on February 15, 2020 by John Swinburn

Age is the enemy of good health; the greater the age, the more powerful the enemy. That is not always true, of course, but lately it seems to be an increasingly factual axiom. As I age, I increasingly engage in … Continue reading →

Posted in Emotion, Health, Logic, Mortality | 1 Comment

The Illusion of Love

Posted on February 13, 2020 by John Swinburn

I find it hard to say “I love you” to most people for whom I feel that emotion (or something like it). The church I joined a couple of years ago, after being not only churchless but actively anti-church and … Continue reading →

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A Fleeting Period of Perpetual Rain

Posted on February 12, 2020 by John Swinburn

Endless sunshine always is interrupted by fleeting periods of perpetual rain. The weather has always been this way. The everlasting pattern of dark and wet, then bright and dry, will continue forever, until it ends. Everything is impermanent and has … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Weather | Leave a comment

A Great Civil War

Posted on February 11, 2020 by John Swinburn

It’s strange, isn’t it, that I’ve been glued to coverage of the New Hampshire primary this evening? Perhaps not. The battle between Democratic candidates for President offers some hope that we may see the demise of the demon in the … Continue reading →

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I Knead a Massage

Posted on February 11, 2020 by John Swinburn

Facebook gave me an opportunity to change the “old look” to the new. I took them up on it. I loathed the new look. I wasn’t crazy about the old one, either, but the new look reminded me of the … Continue reading →

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Looking for Serenity

Posted on February 11, 2020 by John Swinburn

Attempting to achieve anything remotely resembling a sense of serenity these days seems to be a fool’s errand. We are bombarded around the clock with news telling us that almost everything we hold dear is under assault in some form … Continue reading →

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Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)

Posted on February 10, 2020 by John Swinburn

Wisława Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. I did not know that until the morning of February 9, 2020. I do not believe I had ever even heard her name until that moment. But when I … Continue reading →

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The Spring that Refreshes

Posted on February 9, 2020 by John Swinburn

A blogger friend’s post this morning, about her back yard in Sweden, got me thinking about Spring and flowers and plants and such. She wrote about feeding the birds and putting in plants that feed birds and butterflies and the … Continue reading →

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Smooth Stones

Posted on February 8, 2020 by John Swinburn

When I find myself looking down through water flowing over a bed of smooth rock, my mind wanders back in time. Not months or years, but ages. Eons. More years than I can imagine. And when I see a large, … Continue reading →

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A February Mood

Posted on February 7, 2020 by John Swinburn

The temperature outside at 4:00 a.m., a short while after I awoke, registered 25 degrees, just half the number of Fahrenheits the weather witches are forecasting for today. If, indeed, the temperature reaches 50 degrees, today will eclipse yesterday by … Continue reading →

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