• Personal Reflections - Religion

    Your Epic Life

    March 31, 2015 - By 

    I have probably always—or at least frequently— tried too hard and said too much and stayed too long at the party. My struggle has been to dial back my ardor, let things rest, temper my essentially romantic spirit, not make too much of things, quit being so extravagant. But jeez: life is important and colossal and epic, isn’t it? Mine feels like that, and when I listen to you talk about yours, I could swear yours is, too! Your challenges, visions, conflicts, frustrations, triumphs, desires to live more fully and do right by yourself and those you love—what’s not epic about…

  • Music - Religion

    Music and Spirit: OneRepublic’s “I Lived”

    March 28, 2015 - By 

    It’s easy to feel old in this world. Hearing 30-year-olds in the adjoining booth going all nostalgic for the foolishness of their 20-year-old selves is just the beginning. Then there’s hearing a song via your 16-year-old daughter from a band you’ve never heard of that’s been a huge star in the pop rock firmament since their 2007 hit “Apologize” broke records at the time and has since gone on to sell a zillion records, and you ask, “Are they new?” No, “OneRepublic” isn’t new, though their song, “I Lived,” is a recently released (late 2014) monster hit that we heard…

  • Poetry - Poetry by Andrew Hidas

    Dawn Haiku

    March 13, 2015 - By 

             DAWN HAIKU         By Andrew Hidas Perfect slice half moon, stark shadows from barren trees giving way to dawn. *** *** Lovely rendition here of the song that just had to accompany this post… *** Check out this blog’s public page on Facebook for 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied by lovely photography.  https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/ Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing. Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/ Library…

  • Fiction

    State of Impermanence: A Review of Richard Ford’s “Let Me Be Frank With You”

    March 8, 2015 - By 

    When I was living a solitary would-be writer’s life in a musty studio apartment above a garage in Dillon Beach, California back in the early 1980s, I took daily constitutionals along the shore with my terrier Bilbo, most always in a reflective, appreciative and occasionally ecstatic mood. On one such late afternoon walk, I reached my usual turnaround point and swung back to behold the tiny town’s cliff- and hillside coastal homes bathed in a misty, diffused and pale yellow light, as if a photographer had placed some giant colored lens cap over the entire landscape. All the houses and…