• Poetry - Politics/Culture

    What Now? From Empathy To Action

    May 29, 2022 - By 

    “What shall I do now? What shall I do?”/I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street/”With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?/“What shall we ever do?” The words are from T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” published exactly one century ago, when they haunted a world shaken by a barbaric, convulsive war that had upended all received notions of a post-Enlightenment humanity embedded firmly in reason and aiming toward limitless progress and the common good. The fact that a second, even more destructive and demonic war engulfed the world not even two decades later simply added…

  • Personal Reflections - Religion

    God, Dog, and the Ties That Bind:
    A Shenzi Farewell

    May 22, 2022 - By 

    “No matter when or where you go, I will follow.” Dogs never know, when you open that front door and give them the O.K. to accompany you, whether they’re headed only to the mailbox, a walk around the block, an epic car camp, or a trip to the airport for a flight across the continent. Not that any of those matter one way or the other. The only true and important thing: They only want to be with you. And so it was that in the last few minutes of her life, my beloved companion Shenzi, somewhere near 17 (stray…

  • Poetry by Andrew Hidas

    They’re Planting Tulips in Kharkiv

    May 15, 2022 - By 

        THEY’RE PLANTING TULIPS IN KHARKIV            By Andrew Hidas The news tells us of mass tulip plantings in Kharkiv, just one more Ukrainian city bringing new definition to the word “beleaguered” in this long spring of horrors. I picture those tulips tightly clutched in fists, shaken and ascending to the heavens as an ultimate “Fuck you!” to the bomb-droppers and missile senders who become blinded by the color explosion of tulip petals hurled aloft in anger, defiance and hope—blessed, dubious, inexplicable hope. In our front garden the other day, the world’s most purposeful sparrow…

  • General Nonfiction - Politics/Culture

    A Question From Marilynne Robinson: “What Are We Doing Here?”

    May 8, 2022 - By 

    So the United States, with plenty of company from around the world, is going through a terrible time. A devastating and wearisome pandemic, renewed inflation, climate change and its associated weather catastrophes, a reinflamed battle over abortion, a fight seemingly unto death over the very nature of how we acquire knowledge, see reality and practice democracy. It’s hard to find optimists out there, and I wouldn’t claim you’ll discover a raging one in eminent novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson either. What you will find throughout her work, though, and quite specifically in the title essay of her 2018 collection, “What…