• Poetry

    Call of the Wild (Within):
    Carl Sandburg’s “Wilderness”

    November 20, 2022 - By 

    Grrrrrrrowwwwwwwlllllllllroarrrrrrrrrrr!!!! The wildness echoes through prairies and canyons, carries over hillsides and frozen peaks, through churning waters that send chills down spines as it reverberates to the very ground of being and splays out an inherent threat to destroy all in its path. Loosed from any chains of decorum and constraint, it is capable of cold remorseless cruelty, impervious to the call of conscience and mercy, subject only to its primitive need for survival, sustenance and the dominance its genetic coding compels it to maintain. It is wolf, it is fox, it is hog and fish and baboon and eagle. And…

  • Personal Reflections - Religion

    Creativity and the Sublime Joys of Playing God

    November 12, 2022 - By 

    “Oh senseless, man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create God by the dozens.” The quote is from the French philosopher and wit Voltaire, poking fun at the universal human penchant to gaze up at the heavens and conjure some supreme creator who waved its hand a few times (because, like us, it has hands) and made everything there is. Voltaire was right, of course: We are not (yet) God enough to create a worm. (We should note, though, that worms are infinitely more complex than we might think at first glance. Come to think…

  • Music

    Brilliant Songs #34: Tommy Prine’s
    “Ships in the Harbor”

    November 5, 2022 - By 

    Tommy Prine is sad about something. But it’s not an indulgent, wallowing, “poor me” kind of sadness. What saddens him is just a fact of life, and he knows it has to be that way. He can’t change it, so all he can do is acknowledge it, live with it, accept it for what it is. Oh, and one more thing: He can write a song. The tune is “Ships in the Harbor,” and it became the 26-year-old Prine’s debut single when it was released in September, prelude to an album set for release early in the new year. Part…