“The great attraction for most students of Aikido is the underlying philosophy behind all the physical training. Essentially, you can’t keep improving in the art unless you consistently work on yourself, shedding ego,…

“There we were, a bunch of strangers in a random field, all facing the same direction as if we were sitting on the beach. But our heads were tipped back and we were…

“What my MS diagnosis did was broaden my ‘inquisitive excursions.’ It’s an integral part of my nature to seek answers. Like, when I was a pre-schooler and my mom wanted me to believe…

“How wonderful that our editor suggested this theme for our first columns of 2018. How timely! For, as I write, the Legion of Honor, a museum in San Francisco, has a segment of…

“As the years have passed for me here, and particularly in fractious 2016, I fear that the age of multiple masks, and luminous, colorful ones, is yielding to that of the mono-mask.”—By Alexander…

“I am known for walking with my eyes to the ground. This may be taken by some as evidence of my melancholy character. To my Edwardian great-aunts, it would have been evidence of…

“Not long ago, we went to a christening in a sweet little church just outside Athens. The ceremony unfolded the way it’s meant to: the priest was benignly pious, the baby howled when…

“That is how I remember us, styling away, off to where Miss Nightingale, clad in her long, dark woolen skirts—(it was always after Labor Day that I saw her)—and twin sets, brandished her…

“My people are dying,” said the whale. “Our only salvation lies in becoming land animals again. Each time the dolphins and we beach ourselves, we get a little farther inland. I’ve gone past…

“[The administration] is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic national security and military supremacy, interlinking of religion and the ruling elite,…