• Music

    Fifth Annual Songs of Summer

    June 20, 2017 - By 

    When I decided to celebrate the summer solstice of 2013 with a salute to “Songs of Summer,” I had a warm, portentous feeling—“Hey, I could do this again next year and maybe even annually!”—and a tiny concern: “Might I run out of summer songs someday?” The warm feeling has come to pass with three subsequent editions of this Rite of Summer, the whole previous lot available for viewing and listening here, while the concern has proven to be slightly ridiculous, given how many songs—of  the pop-rock genres  in particular—incorporate summer themes. Seems the warmer days get us out more, and the longer nights…

  • Odds & Ends - Personal Reflections

    The Old Dead Shit of a Late Spring Garden

    June 18, 2017 - By 

    I know I’m not the first person to realize that gardening is the world’s most ubiquitous and consistent metaphor factory. Prepare the soil, plant a bulb, weed and water a patch of dirt, then have at it on matters regarding one’s place in the world and desire to do right by it. Where else this side of church is one allowed to stand naked (metaphor there, too…) before the creation while pondering its meaning and relevance to one’s life? So on yesterday’s late, late spring day, a certain correspondent of yours found himself deep into mounds of decaying poppies and…

  • General Nonfiction - Odds & Ends

    12 Enduring Takeaways
    From J.M. Barrie’s “Courage”

    June 4, 2017 - By 

    We are fresh off graduation season and its urgent exhortations for young men and women to sally forth and boldly make their mark in the world. Just over ninety-five years ago, the writer J.M. Barrie, yet to produce his enduring masterpiece “Peter Pan,” sounded some of the same notes but went most all of today’s grad speakers quite a bit better in his inaugural address upon being named rector at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. As a speech, “Courage” clocked in at a longish (for these days) one hour-plus, but by virtue of its text being shared and then bound…