• Politics/Culture - Religion

    What Are We To Make of Pope Francis?

    September 26, 2015 - By 

    We are so used to schtick, spin and PR in this world that we hardly want to believe anything anymore. Or believe in anyone. “What’s your game, and what are you trying to sell?” is our default stance, aided and abetted by a media inordinately pleased with itself in finding contradiction upon contradiction in every human being and endeavor. And truth to tell, that job is easy, because we are all as shot-through with contradiction as clay pigeons on a rifle range. Always have been. All of which begets jaundice and jadedness as our modern coins of the realm, and…

  • Poetry - Religion

    The Tides As Science and Metaphor

    September 21, 2015 - By 

    I’ve been steeped in tides on two different occasions over the past several months, luxuriating for several days each time on different coasts, watching the tides do what they seem to have been doing for quite some time now. I’ll bet you know the drill: The tides come in… The tides go out… Kind of repetitive and boring, eh? Truth to tell, for all the time I’ve spent seaside, growing up in southern California and then living on the beach for a couple of years in my adult life, I haven’t investigated the science of tides all that much. I…

  • Personal Reflections

    Postcards From Puget Sound

    September 17, 2015 - By 

    I’m no photographer and my now hopelessly outdated iPhone 4S is not much of a camera, but when you’re on vacation at one of the many dazzling garden spots of our world, it is right and proper to send a few postcards to friends and loved ones. Since I didn’t quite get around to doing so on this past week’s journey to Puget Sound (you noticed your empty mailbox, did you?), I’ll make up for my oversight now with a few snapshots that I hope you’ll enjoy. So without further ado (and with brief accompanying commentary):   Ebey’s Landing is…

  • Odds & Ends

    Notes on That Man-Manly Stoic Thing

    September 11, 2015 - By 

    Up until last Thursday night, San Francisco Giants pitcher Ryan Vogelsong had never hit a home run in a major league career that began in 2000 and has included long stints in the minor leagues and in the Japanese professional league. Then in a game against the Colorado Rockies in Denver, Vogelsong launched a ball over the right field fence for the First Home Run of His Major League Career. That is always a seminal, uniquely gratifying moment in the life of anyone who has ever dared to dream of being a big league ballplayer. As he circled the bases…

  • Personal Reflections

    My Early Jobs: A Labor Day Reflection

    September 7, 2015 - By 

    You know what book I’d buy? A collection of interviews about people’s first or early jobs. There are such riches to be gleaned from our employment histories, all those tales of burger flipping and cashiering, sheep-shearing and babysitting. My first sort-of-real job was as understudy for my brother’s paper route. He was three years older than me and once he landed the job, he appointed himself CEO. Then he hired me, his 9-year-old younger brother, to get up with him twice a week at 5 a.m. to deliver the Eagle Rock Sentinel up one side of the street while he…