Blog - www.richardjespers.com

THE WORLD THROUGH OUR EYES

6/30/2025

Recently, the International Cultural Center at Texas Tech University kicked off a photography show featuring shots from around the world—taken mostly by TTU students and Lubbock residents. I was fortunate enough to have two photos accepted into this show and present them below. If you wish to see them in the context of the entire show, click here for a link.

(1) Swiss Guard at Vatican City On a 2014 trip to Rome, Italy, I snapped this young man. He is part of the Swiss Guard, working on behalf of the Vatican to keep its people safe. The shape and colors of the uniform are unique and caught my eye. (2) Tie Shop, Milan, Italy During this 2014 stop in Milan, Italy, I was intrigued by the simple colors of this display of men's ties. The tie shop was located inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II (mall) near the Duomo di Milano (cathedral).

A WRITER'S WIT: CYRIL WONG

6/27/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
It is the teacher’s and the lawmaker’s responsibility to allow the child to express his feelings about growing up. What happens to a child at that particular age?

It is a terribly vulnerable time, and if we provide youths with an environment to be free, to be expressive, without embarrassing them, without shaming them, they would grow up to be healthy, compassionate adults. Instead, if we force them to “belong, belong, belong,” they all become repressed. There is a complete absence of options.
Cyril Wong
Author of Unmarked Treasure
Born June 27, 1977

C. Wong

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Blake Bailey
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Donald Windham
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
FRI: My Book World | Julie Sedivy, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love

A WRITER'S WIT: PEARL S. BUCK

6/26/2025

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
Pearl S. Buck
Author of The Living Reed
Born June 26, 1892

P. S. Buck

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | TBD
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Blake Bailey
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Donald Windham
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A WRITER'S WIT: ANTHONY BOURDAIN

6/25/2025

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.
Anthony Bourdain
Author of World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
Born June 25, 1956

A. Bourdain

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck
FRI: My Book World | TBD

A WRITER'S WIT: JANDY NELSON

6/24/2025

Second novels are bears. As are other people's expectations for them. I think taking the time you need with the second book is key. Writers spend years and years on their first novels and then are often expected to turn out a second at warp speed, a recipe for failure.
Jandy Nelson
Author of When the World Tips Over
Born June 24, 1965

J. Nelson

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck
FRI: My Book World | TBD

ABUNDANCE IF WE WANT IT

6/20/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
I get tired of stories that keep going and going and never get anywhere. It's like a promise that's never fulfilled. Stories need endings. Otherwise, they aren't really stories. Just pages.
Ted Naifeh
Author of Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things
Born June 20, 1971

T. Naifeh

MY BOOK WORLD

Klein, Ezra and Derek Thompson. Abundance. New York: Simon, 2025.

If you’ve ever listened to Klein’s podcast via the Times, you know how bright and articulate he is, how in-depth he explores an issue. In the introduction he and Thompson state up front:

“This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need” (4).

So much of what they say is important that I find myself underlining far more than I usually do in a book these days, but I find this statement moving: “Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it. Debates over the size of government obscured the diminishing capacity of government. An abundance of consumer goods distracted us from a scarcity of homes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs. A counterforce is emerging, but it is young yet” (5).

The authors focus on both the right and the left, making the problems discussed more universal, less partisan in nature. The authors use California as an example. The state has for years attempted to build a high-speed railroad between LA and SF. After receiving billions of dollars, it is still not done. In fact, in most aspects, it has never begun. Too many state regulations and laws that must be overcome, just to mention one aspect. That is the problem with the left: too many restrictions originally meant to protect land and other values. The right is just the opposite. They want restrictions lifted so they may have the freedom to do what they wish, all the time, full stop—regardless of the outcomes.

So much more I could cite, but I’ll end with this statement concerning energy and how it affects our conception of abundance: “The stocks of fossil fuels are finite and their continued combustion is lethal. This would be true even if climate change was a hoax. Air pollution kills between 7 million and 9 million people each year; that is six or seven times the death toll from traffic accidents and hundreds of times the death toll from war or terrorism or all natural disasters combined. It is deadliest where people cook by burning wood or charcoal and farm by burning the end of the last season’s crops. That is to say, it is deadliest where people are energy poor, because where people are energy poor, they burn fuel and breathe in the byproducts” (63).

This book is one of the most refreshing, stimulating, and informative that I have read in a long time. Buy a copy, read it, and then send copies to your family and friends. It deserves to be widely read.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jandy Nelson
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck
FRI: My Book World | TBD

A WRITER'S WIT: SALMAN RUSHDIE

6/19/2025

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.
Salman Rushdie
Author of The Satanic Verses
Born June 19, 1947

S. Rushdie

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Jandy Nelson
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anthony Bourdain
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Pearl S. Buck

A WRITER'S WIT: SYLVIA FIELD PORTER

6/18/2025

Invest in yourself, in your education. There's nothing better.
Sylvia Field Porter
Author of Your Financial Security
Born June 18, 1913

S. Field Porter

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie
FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance

A WRITER'S WIT: CAROL ANDERSON

6/17/2025

The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship.
Carol Anderson
Author of White Rage
Born June 17, 1959

C. Anderson

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit |Sylvia Field Porter
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie
FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance

NITTY GRITTY OF FLORIDA

6/13/2025

A WRITER'S WIT
The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
Mark Van Doren
Author of Liberal Education
Born June 13, 1894

M. Van Doren

MY BOOK WORLD

Groff, Lauren. Florida. New York: Random, 2018.

As I begin reading this collection of stories, I am doubtful that the author can convince me to like Florida any more than I already do (which isn’t much). Most of my life it has been a way station—to the Bahamas, to Europe, but not a destination of its own—except for two different trips to Key West which actually were delightful. Ms. Groff, however, takes readers into a Florida of gators, snakes, insects, and heat, relentless heat and humidity. But also a place of wild human animals.

There is Jude, “born in a Cracker-style house at the edge of a swamp that boiled with unnamed species of reptiles” (15). There is an older sister who thinks “an island is never really quiet. Even without the storm, there were waves and wind and air conditioners and generators and animals moving out there in the dark” (44). On a stormy night, a woman’s young sons “told me about the World Pool, in which one current goes one way, another goes another way, and where they meet they make a tornado of air, which stretches, said my little one, from the midnight zone, where the fish are blind, all the way up up up to the birds” (77). One narrative titled “Snake Stories” reads like this: “Walk outside in Florida, and a snake will be watching you: snakes in mulch, snakes in scrub, snakes waiting from the lawn for you to leave the pool so they can drown themselves in it, snakes gazing at your mousy ankle and wondering what it would feel like to sink their fangs in deep” (204).

Groff is unafraid to tell readers about human snakes, as well: ne’er do well fathers, skanky women, mean children, perhaps all made malicious by the climate: hot and humid twenty-four/seven. Yet, as Florida’s large population must attest to, there has to be something wonderful about the place: tempting seafood, cool breezes off the water, mild winters, and empathic people here and there who stop to help someone in trouble.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Carol Anderson
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Sylvia Field Porter
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie
FRI: My Book World | Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance

A WRITER'S WIT: ANNE FRANK

6/12/2025

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
Anne Frank
Author of Diary of a Young Girl [published posthumously]
Born June 12, 1929

A. Frank

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Carol Anderson
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Sylvia Field Porter
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Salman Rushdie

A WRITER'S WIT: YASUNARI KAWABATA

6/11/2025

The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.
Yasunari Kawabata
Author of Snow Country
Born June 11, 1899

Y. Kawabata

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank
FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida

A WRITER'S WIT: GINA GERSHON

6/10/2025

The critics tend to forget their own answers after a while.
Gina Gershon
Author of Borderlands
Born June 10, 1962

G. Gershon

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit |Yasunari Kawabata
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank
FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida

SEX AND THE STEINS

6/6/2025

A WRITER'S WIT:
I grew up in North Dakota around Dakota and Ojibwe people, and also small-town people in Wahpeton. Writers make few choices, really, about their material. We have to write about what comes naturally and what interests us—so I do.
Louise Erdrich
Author of The Night Watchman
Born June 6, 1954

L. Erdrich

MY BOOK WORLD

Stadler, Matthew. Allan Stein: A Novel. New York: Grove, 1999.

Since I read this novel the first time, I’ve also read Stadler’s The Sex Offender, and in some ways they deal with the same subject matter. Both books concern youngish male school teachers who are disgraced by having affairs with (underage) male pupils of theirs. Both books have the filthy protagonist flee to Europe or a European-like country (Sex Offender). In both books the older male finds a new young protégé over which to make a fool of himself. Stadler approaches this subject in both cases without judgment (except the judgment the protagonist bears against himself) and with great sensitivity.

In Allan Stein, in order to take flight from his recent fling and disgrace, a young gay American travels to Paris assuming the name of a friend who wishes for him to do some business research on his behalf (he can “vacation” while “Herbert” is gone and also deduct the travel expense for his business). The “new” Herbert is to stay with long-distance friends who’ve never actually met the real Herbert. And . . . they happen to have a fifteen-year-old son who seems very seducible, and Herbert spends a great deal of time attempting to do just that.

The real beauty of the novel (otherwise it might just be a salacious story) is the parallel pursuit he makes: 1) To locate some drawings of Allan Stein (Gertrude Stein’s nephew) on behalf of the real Herbert, an art dealer. 2) To try to gain the confidence of his host’s son, Stéphane. Does “Herbert” indeed seduce the winsome Stéphane? I’m not at liberty to say, but the ending in any case is a satisfying one.

Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Gina Gershon
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Yasunari Kawabata
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank
FRI: My Book World | Lauren Groff, Florida [Stories]

A WRITER'S WIT: BILL MOYERS

6/5/2025

From the outset we believed there should be one channel [PBS] not only free of commercials but free from commercial values; a channel that does not represent an economic exploitation of life; a channel whose purpose is not to please as many consumers as possible, in order to get as much advertising as possible, or order to sell as many products as possible; a channel—at least one—whose success is measured not by the numbers who watch but by the imprint left on those who do.
Bill Moyers
Author of Moyers on Democracy
Born June 5, 1934

B. Moyers

Up Next:
FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein: A Novel
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Gina Gershon
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Yasunari Kawabata
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Frank

A WRITER'S WIT: RUTH WESTHEIMER

6/4/2025

When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears.
Ruth Westheimer
Author of Sex for Dummies
Born June 4, 1928

R. Westheimer

Up Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bill Moyers
FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allen Stein: A Novel

A WRITER'S WIT: ALLEN GINSBERG

6/3/2025

Speaking of the Stonewall Inn riots: You know, the guys there were so beautiful. They’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had ten years ago. Defend the fairies!
Allen Ginsberg, Poet
Author of Howl and Other Poems
Born June 3, 1926

A. Ginsberg

Up Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit |Ruth Westheimer
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bill Moyers
FRI: My Book World | Matthew Stadler, Allen Stein: A Novel