Monthly Archives August 2020

The late Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) sounds like the Buddha himself in the first line of his poem, “Doubletake,” published in 1991. “Human beings suffer,” it begins, and we suspect we are in for it now, another journey through melancholia borne of downtroddenness as only the Irish can express it. The second line elaborates on one form that suffering takes: “they torture one another…”

And so they do.

The poem’s 39 lines go on for a couple more stanzas in that vein, which you can read in full below. But fear not: Heaney doesn’t stay submerged in the dark depths for long.

This is a “Doubletake,” after all, which will involve a reconsideration, a reframing, an elaboration that takes an “On the other hand…” approach to chronicling the vicissitudes of the human heart.

The poem is from the volume, “The Cure at Troy,”  in which Heaney adapted Sophocles’ play “Philo...

So at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, we are reminded that Joe Biden will allow “No religion. No anything.” Not only that, but he will “Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God.”

Against God—dear me!

Whom he will “hurt.”

Poor God! We had better buck that boy up, send him a condolence or “I’ve been thinking of you” card to restore whatever confidence has been shaken by the Biden campaign’s assault against his very person.

Cheesh, for a “Sleepy Joe” whose doddering, demented, cognitively declining ways have become the butt of Republican Party campaign ads, it’s a rather remarkable feat to be able to “hurt” the omnipotent, omnipresent Creator of the Universe. Were it true, that kind of power would be something of a resume builder.

Maybe he could restore the luster of IBM!

Resurrect the Lehman Brothers!

Exhume the “Excite” search engine!

Get ...

I have taken to spotting the sudden August profusion of caterpillars making their way across the park path before the sun makes it over the trees. Danger is everywhere, a veritable Omaha Beach, but with unwitting enemies. A steady fusillade of pedestrians, drivers and cyclists go about their morning through the park, unknowingly poised to crush the hapless creatures in but one more episode of natural, deadly roulette. Deliberating hardly at all in my mission of mercy, I begin scooping up first one, then another and another caterpillar and depositing them on the grass three feet and an eternity away, abutting the forested hillside. Then I turn back to espy two more, just a few feet ahead as an SUV turns in from the street coming at us...

There are songs you hear in passing, once, twice, five times, before you notice your ears have been perking up a bit more on each listen, and you finally ask yourself, “So just who and what is that, anyway?”

Other songs gobsmack you on first hearing, leaving you speechless and sputtering, mainlining a message and melody like an electric current, perfectly wedding a voice with a lyric and painting a picture with such crystalline detail and depth of feeling as to leave you shook to your core, knowing you just heard something great, and will want to hear it a lot more.

The late Bill Morrissey’s “Long Gone” is the first type of song, which I’d heard a number of times over months from another room where my sweetheart had it on her playlist while doing yoga (no sacred Hindu chants for her), and I finally asked her about it...

I know a little bit about Judaism in general but next to nothing about its Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox versions, about which Jews themselves have huge differences of opinion. (And part of what I know about Judaism in general is how rarely Jews hesitate in sharing those opinions…)

That’s a major reason why, as a lapsed Catholic Unitarian Universalist with mystical Christian-Buddhist sensibilities and an always attentive ear for the common core of religious practice, I was enchanted recently to stumble upon “Shtisel,” an Israeli television production that ran there for two 12-episode seasons beginning in 2013 and concluded in 2016.

It then crossed the seas courtesy of Netflix in 2018 and attracted such a rapidly growing audience that it was exhumed recently for a third season that is currently in production, with full Covid-19 precautions in place.

Set in the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Geula in modern day...