What Do You Stand For?
As I near the end of The Rape of the Mind, I look at the world I live in and think back over the past three years—and even over the last century—and I feel gratitude for the people in the…
Before the Lips Go Still
I don’t know how or when it happened, but at some point in life, I began to let myself have my own opinions. I reached a point at which I became okay with not liking something I was told I…
A Story Told from Sanborn to Zusak
(Bookcase Inspiration) Fools Crow about how they’re Educated, and it’swithin The Art of Possibility, but I wonder ifthey’ve merely been indoctrinated at The Devil’s Pleasure Palace.Might we be dealing with A Confederacy of Dunces, whosuspend Rules of Civility and build…
Watch Your Language
One of these days, I’ll get to It’s Not About Food by Carol Normandie and Laurelee Roark. It’s there on my shelf. If I stand up and take a few steps, I can have it in my hot little hand before you…
Origins and Ends
The golf lovers around here spent much of the weekend, when they weren’t out on one of the courses that just opened for the season, watching The Masters. Since they no longer have to put up with CBS Sports and…
Sharing an Apple
Poet Jane Hirshfield is new to me. Robert Bly is the one who introduced us, in his book, Looking for Dragon Smoke, and although I knew Bly’s name, I had paid it no attention (perhaps because none of my college…
I’ll Take My Truth Intact, Thank You
This is my first post in a week. What have I been doing since I last published? What I usually do: living my life; spending time with my family; talking with them, with God; reading; thinking; writing. In fact, one…
It Was Never a Fair Game
Once again, it is International Women’s Day. We ladies get thrown the annual bone: “Here you go, girls. Satisfy yourselves with that,” and we’re supposed to be somehow grateful. I don’t know, maybe we should enjoy it while it lasts.…
Earth and Sky
Ray Bradbury published (according to the Internet search I just did) more than 30 books, 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. There is simply no doubt that the man was a writer and knew what he was…
Farber Knows Fauci
I never considered myself a journalist. After graduating from college, I worked for about seven months as a reporter for the weekly newspaper in my hometown in Maine. About five years later, I began a year-and-a-half stint as staff writer…
Those Damn Questions
I realized today that questions make people uncomfortable, and the askers of those questions are not so great, either. I don’t know, however, if I should call it a breakthrough. Maybe it’d be better characterized as a memory. Do you…
When Clarity is Needed
In The Power and the Glory, considered by many to be Graham Greene’s masterpiece, the whisky priest is on the run in Tabasco, a state in Mexico where Catholicism was outlawed in the 1930s. Priests are being rounded up and…
