Thunders and Unravelings

A little over a century ago, a young man died of tuberculosis while in prison, just three months before his twenty-fifth birthday. According to various sources, he had etched a bit of free verse into a wall of his cell: Our shadows will walk through Vienna wander the court, frighten the lords. Gavrilo Princip had…

The Cost of “Free”

Pretty much everyone knows Aesop’s fable of the ants and the grasshopper: the grasshopper frolics the summer away while the ants work hard to set aside enough provisions to survive the winter. Come autumn, the sick and starving grasshopper begs the ants for food. “You made music all summer,” the ants say, “now dance!” And…