The great clock tower of Sighisoara (the birthplace of Vlad Dracula in
Transylvania) was built by German immigrants from Saxony in the 14th
century.

A popular expression here in the United States is "That's history," as if history is dead and irrelevant. To me, the legacy of history is present in our lives and our politics today, everywhere from Europe to Asia, from Latin America to the Middle East, from the US to Australia and Oceania. Just think about the 'culture wars' over values that are raging in this country, which to me seem so clearly the legacy of the Protestant Reformation and the Puritan settlement of North America. There are countless examples of the impact of history on our daily lives in the present era. I've been reading history since I first learned to read. I'm especially interested with European and Asian history, and within those regions, I've read most about Britain, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, and Korea. Of all the periods, 16th and 17th century Europe are the most fascinating to me: the period from the beginning of the Reformation through the Renaissance and the early Enlightenment strikes me as perhaps the most formative in Western history. And there is no more fascinating a cast of characters than that of the great European dynasties of the era: the Tudors (especially Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I), the Valois (François I and Catherine de Medicis), the Bourbons (Henry IV, Louis XIV, etc.) the Stuarts (Mary Queen of Scots, James I and their successors) and the Hapsburgs (Charles V and Philip II and their Austrian and Spanish successors).

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I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I currently keep up with philosophy as best I can as a member of the Philosophy Forum, a group of people (mostly amateur philosophy enthusiasts) that meets twice monthly at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan (if you live in the NYC area and are interested in participating, see the links page on this site). Among my favorite texts of philosophy are the dialogues of Plato (especially the Symposium), Walden and the other writings of Henry David Thoreau, and the Tao Te Ching -- usually attributed to Laozi (Lao Tsu). The philosophic text that has the most resonance for me is the Seven Inner Chapters of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tsu).

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NYAGRA launched the public phase of the campaign for Int. No. 24 (the
New York City transgender rights bill) at a press conference on the
steps of City Hall (2.29.2000).

Politics is certainly about government policy and elections, which can have a profound impact on our lives; just think about the implications of the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the (non-)election of George W. Bush in 2000. Here in the United States, some of us seem to have been under the delusion that conditions and events beyond our shores do not affect us; the terrorist attacks of 9/11 should have definitively addressed that question. But as vital as politics in this narrower sense may be, I would follow Foucault in arguing that all of our relationships are in some important sense political, involving as they do relations of power. Many of my writings are concerned with politics writ small, and all of them are concerned with politics writ large (see my writings page).

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The Unitarian Church of All Souls in Manhattan is rooted in a tradition
that values "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder,
affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and
an openness to the forces which create and uphold life..."

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The doors of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco are exact replicas of the bronze doors that Lorenzo Ghiberti made for the baptistery of the Duomo in Florence, which Michelangelo dubbed 'the Gates (or 'Doors') of Paradise' (i Portali del Paradiso).

Ironically enough, given how much I now love art, painting and the visual arts really felt very foreign to me as a child. It wasn't until my senior year in college, when I took a course in modern art while doing a study abroad program in London, that my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of art, through great modernist artists such as Picasso, Monet and Cezanne. From there, I worked my way backwards through the Old Masters. In London, I also took a (very) short course in Chinese ceramics at the British Museum, which awakened me to the astonishing riches of Chinese art. Within the field of Asian art, I find great appeal in celadon (Sung dynasty and Korean), Ming blue-and-white porcelain, Han figures, Japanese screens, and Zen art. Among my favorite European artists are Jan Van Eyck (the Arnolfini Wedding), Hieronymus Bosch (the Garden of Delights and the Hay Wain), Pieter Brueghel the Elder (the Tower of Babel), the Limbourg Brothers (les Tres Riches Heures de Jean Duc de Berry), and Antoine Watteau (Embarcation a Cythere, l'Enseigne de Gersaint), and just to name a few. While traveling around Europe, there were three works of art that struck me more forcibly than any others: the so-called Elgin Marbles (the Parthenon sculptures, half of which are in the British Museum in London and half in the Acropolis Museum in Athens), l'Agneau Mystique (the Ghent Altarpiece) of Van Eyck, and the bronze doors that Lorenzo Ghiberti made for the baptistery of the Duomo in Florence, which Michelangelo dubbed 'the Gates of Paradise' (i Portali del Paradiso).

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Ganz Hall, the venue for many performances at Roosevelt University in Chicago, is a masterpiece of early 20th c. design by the celebrated
architect Louis Sullivan.

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Shakespeare: portrait by the English engraver Martin Droeshout featured
on the cover of the First Folio

Theater- and opera-going during the two years I lived in London were an extraordinary experience. I reckon I saw more than 100 operas and probably nearly as many plays. I now live in that other great capital of theater and opera, New York. Whenever they do an interview with a celebrity and ask for the shortlist of books that he or she would take to a desert island, they always seem to make the qualification that the individual will be supplied with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare; there's a reason for that, isn't there? To me, Shakespeare represents the very summit of dramatic art, and while I realize that thought is not an original one, there is no other playwright who comes even close to his extraordinary use of language to shape a comedy or a tragedy. Among Shakespeare's plays, "King Lear" is the one i find the most metaphysical; I also love the language of "Richard II," which is some of the most poetic that he wrote for the theater. In opera, the four great operas of Mozart are as close to perfection as one could imagine, with "Die Zauberflote" ("The Magic Flute") being the most sublime of all. Other favorite operas of mine include Verdi's "Falstaff" and Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" and "Turandot." For me, Wagner was a great genius who desperately needed an editor, and I no longer have the patience to sit through any of his operas in the theater (having seen most of them live in my younger days); but the Pilgrim's Chorus from "Tannhauser," the Good Friday Music from "Parsifal," the Preislied ("Morgenlich leuchtend") and quintet from "Die Meistersinger," and Siegfried's Funeral Music from "Gotterdammerung" are divine inspirations.

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The King James Bible of 1611 (First Edition): a page from the Second
Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians

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