No man is an island · January 5, 2026

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

— John Donne

At this time, we might replace "Europe" with "the Americas" or "man's habitat."

I enjoy reading and I enjoy music. Recently I wanted to order a copy of Philipp Spitta's Johann Sebastian Bach: a, or the, canonical biography of one of the major classical composers. Finding used copies of books in Europe in their original languages has been one of the small joys of my life for many years. Alas, that is not possible now, with the elimination of the de minimis tariff exemption. Eventually, I managed to find a U.S. bookseller who had a few surplus copies of an out-of-print edition from Hamburg.

I doubt my purchase of an out-of-print book in from a small German bookstore would have taken away from American jobs. But xenophobia is thriving. I am a peaceful soul and won't try to combat it. It wouldn't do any good anyway. (The situation does call to my mind the Nazi book-burnings.)