Good Stuff At Amazing Discounts

Looking back over my vast production, I must say that I am very pleased to have offered you, my beloved double-dozen, some good reading at below fire-sale prices, which is to say, free. Some of this stuff, maybe even a lot of it, has been really good reading.

Well, I haven’t made a nickel on it, nor do I want to, actually.

I’d like to have more readers, but the main point is, I enjoy writing it, and I think that it’s good for me to do so. What else should I do? More chess problems? Take up yoga? Finish the novel that no one would ever read? Do those number problems that add up to nine? Sadooko or something? Crossword puzzles? Read even more than I do already? Waste time socializing?

I write about some big ideas, and I try to keep the posts to four hundred words or so, and that, I can tell you, is not always easy. To be concise, and still make sense, and not be overly conclusive, in other words, to include something to support what I say, is not particularly easy. It is just the kind of mental exercise that doctors say is important when one has reached my stage of life. Use it or lose it!

It is also true, as I tell my students, that unless you can make sense of something in writing, you don’t really understand it. Becoming familiar with something in your own mind is easy; being able to explain it to someone else is harder; hardest of all is explaining it in writing so that it makes sense to the reader. So when I write about something, I’m helping myself to understand it.

And who benefits from this? Besides me, that is? You, dear reader. This is the treasure that I share with you. Your continuing readership is my reward, all eighteen or twenty of you. I love you all.