Say it loud: I’m white and male and not very proud. And it’s all thanks to two NPR stories. The first came as I was driving to work. WUNC, our local station hosts a program called The State of Things. Frank Stasio’s topic today was “Hillary and Obama.” I came in on the middle of…
After what I saw of the State of the Union address last night, I couldn’t help but think of Steve Earle’s “Christmas in Washington,” which he wrote in the late nineties. Ten years later, the parties’ names are interchangeable. When Steve introduces the song, he often says, “This is a song about heroes.” It’s Christmastime…
What’s the point of pain? That’s the question that ran through my mind last night as I drove home from work. When I wrote about remembering a few posts back, one of the lines from the clip of Jerry Orbach singing, “Try to Remember” was deep in december it’s nice to rememberwithout a hurt the…
I intended to write more this evening, but instead I got to paint. My friend Doug is in town and he is an artist. I asked for a painting lesson, so tonight we sat down in the dining room and he constructed a still life centered around a ceramic Winnie the Pooh I have (at…
Gaza is one of the Palestinian Territories on the border between Israel and Egypt and a part of the land taken by Israel in the 1967 war. Conditions these days have continued to worsen because of an Israeli blockade on the area that has not allowed even food and fuel to get into Gaza. Reuters…
The Writer’s Almanac put me back in touch with a poem I deeply love yesterday. Since I’m struggling to find words of my own tonight, I’ll let Robert Frost do the talking. Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s…
Ever since I wrote the post on memory the other day, I’ve had the Hubble Telescope on my mind (which may explain the headaches). I don’t know much at all about the giant flying machine except it is discovering all kinds of things about our universe and sending back pictures that are absolutely amazing. When…
When I was in seminary, I took voice lessons because I wanted to learn to sing better. We had a musical school that offered voice to non-majors, so I went and asked and they agreed. One of the songs I learned was “I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked,” which was sung from the vantage point…
I’ve stared at the screen the last two days and then gone to bed without writing anything. I woke up this morning, intending to chase away whatever was keeping me from putting words down, but didn’t have much luck because I just felt empty. As I sat there, John Prine’s words came to mind: there’s…
One day during the last couple of weeks, I heard a story on NPR about a guy who is documenting his entire life – every email, every event, every just about anything – on his computer, and has been doing so for several years. I can’t remember which NPR program aired the segment, so I…