• Personal Reflections

    On Data Loss, Fresh Starts, and Grace

    October 27, 2015 - By 

    So I woke up yesterday morning and all the data on my IPhone had been erased, wiped clean. “Hello!” it said as I gazed at the screen after leaving it the previous evening performing what was purported to be a standard update of my operating system. That “Hello” (in umpteen languages!) had an eerie chill to it, as if if I had just removed a new phone from the box. All my contacts, apps, photos, recent messages, emails, notes and audio memos to myself from my walks—gone, emptied, pffft… Catastrophe, of course. Or at least a modern, pampered, affluenza-infected version…

  • Odds & Ends - Poetry

    Two Moon Poems: New and Full

    October 14, 2015 - By 

    The full moon tends to get all the best press and draw the most eyeballs and adulation, but for my money, the new moon (or at least the “new moon + 1 day”; more on that below) is every bit as worthy of our regard. The full moon represents abundance, being topped out, awash and abursting, like the universal mother with breasts so full of milk she cannot bear to move another inch until she drains them into the avid awaiting mouths of her babes. The full moon lights up the entire earth; we must remain deep in shadow if…

  • Odds & Ends - Personal Reflections

    On the Joys and Virtues of Competition

    October 7, 2015 - By 

    Competition, as we know from Darwin, is built into the very fabric of existence. At a baseline level, it’s been all-out war from day one among plants and animals who compete fiercely for food sources, water, and the sunlight that helps them grow. Nothing symbolic about this competition: If you’re a plant, you need to claim your little piece of soil and sun and cling to it with utter tenacity. If you’re an animal, you either succeed in escaping predators and tracking down prey or plant food for your daily sustenance, or you die. Nature is very unforgiving. It merely shrugs as all living things navigate the carnage of daily…

  • Odds & Ends - Personal Reflections

    Six Takeaways From Watching a Conversation Among the Deaf

    October 1, 2015 - By 

    I had occasion to watch a quintet of deaf people have a little social gathering at my neighborhood pool one afternoon last week. Though they also used their voices and formed words, it quickly became evident that their intense and ongoing gesturing with their hands was not due to a common Italian heritage. Though I could make out an occasional word from where I sat at only a slight remove from them, their speech was not quite clear and it was apparent that they were complementing their verbalization with sign language (or vice versa, actually). I felt a bit like…