What, in the end, is enough? Reflections in the Philadelphia Inquirer

All week long I am thinking about ambition. The things we want and why we want them. The adjuration of enough.

I sit in the home of a poet and listen to him speak about choosing family over notoriety, quiet meals over the blustery pursuit of being widely known. I count the consequences of yearning for more - more opportunity, more visibility, more success, whatever success actually is. I think about how much more honest and unthwarted friendship means than a you-are-the-winner life.

Blustery pursuits. More and more. It can be dangerous stuff.

I'm still pondering Saturday morning, when I set out for the Bryn Mawr Farmers' Market, one of a number of marketplaces in the Farm to City network that celebrates local farmers and food artisans. (Farm to City markets can also be found in Rittenhouse Square, University Square, on East Passyunk, Girard, and Moyamensing, and in Havertown, Chestnut Hill, Swarthmore, among other places.) The temperature is a rare 70 degrees. The skies are blue. The air is breezy. The white tents in Bryn Mawr's Municipal Lot 7 have about them a carnival mood.

Read the whole story here, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.