Deceptively Simple

Location: Willow Springs, in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (map)
Date: May 30, 2009. 7:45AM
Time: 2:16:19
Distance: 16 miles, give or take
Number of other people seen: 15 (2 runners, 8 hikers, 5 dog-walkers)
Number of deer: 4
Height of mud splatters: Up to the knee
Number of times “I’m completely f*&$^& lost” went through brain: 2
Number of scenic [...]

Few sights warm the heart of a native Midwesterner on a solitary walk far from home more than that of a bunch of kids playing Little League baseball. One dad hitting grounders to the infield, a smaller group off in left field playing pepper, a couple other grown-ups on hand to hit pop flies and [...]

After a week in New York catching up with friends, going to concerts (yay, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jonathan Nott, the Bamberg Symphony; St. Vincent; the Berlin Staatskapelle and Daniel Barenboim; and the International Contemporary Ensemble and Corey Dargel), museums (yay, Met; Frick Collection; Morgan Library; and Neue Galerie), and walking all over Central and Prospect Parks, [...]

Someone with a .co.uk address found this site after Googling “Richard Taruskin Twitter.” Is there any writer astride the Earth today, in any field, less suited to the 140-character limits of Tweets than the author of the 4,080-page Oxford History of Western Music? Richard Powers? Peter Matthiessen?
A little math…if each of those 4,080 pages has 800 [...]

“Well, the beliefs that one most cherishes one is least willing to test. I do not go in at that open door. But lingering, but reluctant, is my tread as I pass by it; and I pause to bathe in the light [from the open door] that is as the span of our human life, [...]