• Personal Reflections - Philosophy

    Try a Little Tenderness: Notes on a Daughter’s Broken Finger

    April 27, 2013 - By 

    We were sitting in a private room in the ER, X-rays done, waiting for the doctor to arrive to show us the pictures and prescribe a course of action. That’s when my 14-year-old daughter had what was her first, I think, enlightenment moment, fully grasping, in a personal and urgent way, the strange tragic happenstances that can alter life in a blink. Thankfully, the in-breaking bit of wisdom didn’t cost her very much by way of bodily injury. “It’s so weird,” she said, a shallow laugh coming into her voice somewhere near the top of her throat. “This morning I…

  • Music

    The Intimate Genius of Jesse Winchester

    April 24, 2013 - By 

    Words, so many words. Sometimes, it is helpful to have fewer of them—and set to music. And sometimes, the intimacy of a solo singer songwriter, writing and singing soul to soul, is the perfect antidote to the vastness and almost inevitable abstractions of Big Questions and Conundrums. And few singers do “intimate” like Jesse Winchester does. It requires a peculiar kind of genius to lay one’s soul quite this bare while working to harvest the artistic and creative chops that coalesce into such timeless art. I needed something from the likes of Jesse Winchester after the week we’ve had in…

  • Personal Reflections - Religion

    Forgive the Boston Marathon Bombers?

    April 20, 2013 - By 

    No matter the event, whether tragedy or triumph, we look for connections. “I was born and grew up there!” “My sister lives around the corner!” “I did a summer internship in that building!” “My nephew was his college roommate!” Most grievously, when the connection has been foisted on us by life’s merciless and random roulette wheel: “That was my 8-year-old son who died in the blast.” My own connection to the Boston Marathon is manifold. Exactly 20 years ago, I had approached that same finishing line where the explosions happened, exultant, like everyone, after finally living every runner’s dream: I…

  • Odds & Ends - Religion

    Weeding the Poppy Patch

    April 12, 2013 - By 

    If I were inclined to believe in God as a helpful, sky-residing fellow lording it over us all from his perch in the heavens, I would present him with three words of challenge by which he might explain himself and his creation: fleas, mosquitos, and the (damn) weeds that repopulate my poppy patch with unremitting, increasing fecundity every year. Of the three, this last one is the matter that most occupies my thoughts every April, as spring and its weeds kick into high gear. Let me be clear: I bow deeply to the wonder of the earth’s regeneration. The exultation,…

  • Fiction - Film/TV - Poetry

    On a Too-Short Road With Jack Kerouac

    April 5, 2013 - By 

    There is this one life we are given. This we know. All the rest of it—the heavens, the reincarnations, the other life-as-rehearsal scenarios—let us set those aside for the moment and concentrate on the indisputable facts staring at us: We are born, we live, we die. And most often, even if we are fortunate enough to ripen through the full flesh of our cycle on this earth, we will say it has passed too quickly, as unto a dream. The grains. Through the hourglass. Jack Kerouac has been pushing his response to these essential facts since he wrote his cultural…