Last week we were working on a house half way down the slope of monument hill, in sight of the bay and the distant beach.  About 5 pm I happened to look up and saw an amazing sight.  High above were hundreds of seagulls circling in a great flock in the light of the setting sun.  Their wings glinted white as they wheeled and turned in slow, graceful interwoven patterns.  They were at such a height that at first I only saw bright flickering white lights before I realized it was birds.  When  I was a boy living a stone's throw from the Charles River I remember the gulls would also congregate in flocks high above the river at the end of the day.

Es, pues, la fe la certeza de lo que se espera, la conviccion de lo que no se ve.


I am beginning a new course at Umass Boston and I will occasionally post bits from the writing I do for that course.  The first one is below.

Culture is probably as complex and multifaceted as language, deeply engrained in every individual save perhaps feral children.  As such, a definition is going to be hard to come by without some serious consideration.  But what we immediately think of when asked to define culture is the particular way that a particular group of people do things.  Culture has to do with group identity, it is a set of shared characteristic behaviors.  On one level cultural differences are easy to detect,  language is probably the principal identifier of culture, followed by cuisine, social manners, music, shared mythology, taboos, religions, world views, religious views, rituals and rites surrounding festivals and feast days, coming of age, marriage, childbirth and death.  As part of our nature, we human beings form cohesive social units that enable our survival in the primitive world, fortify us against enemies, let us overcome obstacles impossible to scale  individually,  that constrain us on one hand and on the other release immeasurable creative potential for all manner of things both good and evil.  Culture is the glue that holds us together as a tribe, a people or a nation, and perhaps, transcending tribalism at some ethereal level, as human beings.

Tu le peux si tu le veux, lui disait-il
                          
                               Marcel Proust

You can get it if you really want
                          
                               Jimmy Cliff