• Painting & Sculpture

    Dark and Resplendent Nights:
    A Study of Van Gogh’s Two Cafés

    November 26, 2016 - By 

    Decades ago, when I had my head buried in theology and philosophy at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, I used to regularly wander over to the Caffe Mediterraneum on Telegraph Avenue, a kind of rough-hewn and clattery coffeehouse with a 1950s pedigree, way before coffeehouses-ala-Starbucks got chic. The place had a kind of Mideast/Turkish vibe, the servers usually dark and mustachioed, the patrons hunched over their espressos with stacks of art books or Heidegger and Sartre philosophical tomes prominently displayed next to them on the round tables. The “Med” wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, as it were, but its tone of…

  • Poetry - Poetry by Andrew Hidas

    A Prayer for Leonard Cohen, and That Syrian Girl Without a Hospital

    November 21, 2016 - By 

    nothing new, nothing to see, just another mound of rubble and still the dogs zig and zag over the cold stones, their handlers holding tight, awaiting a pause and deeper inhalation now the rescuers kneel removing stone by careful stone, the veil of destruction lifted from the face of a girl awake, blinking, inert, four days entombed but alive, alive oh! HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH (he sang of things above and below, the eternal fusion, the fast and slow) (the recurrent broken hallelujahs) a man lifts her, this perhaps 4-year-old, the christ child in swaddling clothes suffering the sins of the…

  • Politics/Culture - Religion

    The Moral Imperative of Hope

    November 19, 2016 - By 

    So the unthinkable happened. A shallow, venal, vindictive, mendacious, unprincipled demagogue has won the presidency of the United States, and many of us are disheartened and crushed and fearful and angry and just aching to emote. So we do, and it is good and necessary. We howl to the heavens to release our outrage and frustration. Our sadness for those most vulnerable to the fiscal machinations that lie ahead—the poor, the elderly and infirm, and even the untold numbers of ‘Regular Joe” working class types who will see tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals but likely precious little flowing into anything…

  • Politics/Culture

    I’m Voting for Our Common Humanity

    November 5, 2016 - By 

    A thought experiment: What if the current presidential election pitted Tim Kaine against Mike Pence? What would be the tone of argument, attack and vituperation between two, by most all accounts, decent middle-aged men who exhibit next to no bombast and would appear to harbor precious few skeletons, legal or otherwise, in their respective closets? Might the entire campaign have been conducted with at least a modicum of respect and focus on the issues of the day rather than the character flaws of the combatants, er, candidates? What if Kaine and Pence weren’t relegated mostly to defending the figures at the…