“I’ve been a pastor for more than 15 years, and I am still amazed at folks in nursing homes, many unable to remember the majority of their own lives, who will begin to sing and nod and clap when they hear Christmas carols. O the power of music, on them and on me.” – Amy […]
Read moreToday, just before Christmas, finishing up my grading and trying to cut down on the caffeine that’s one of the many things spiking my blood pressure this month, I picked up a can of Coke from the cooler in our student union. Those who knew me in grad school, when I drank about a case […]
Read moreThe ghostly, homely faces of these beasts floated into my mind earlier last week when I misread a New York Times headline at the top of my webmail page. “Physicists will have to wait a little longer for Higgs Boson,” the tagline read. Of course, I read it first as “Higgs Bison.” But considering what […]
Read moreBack in September, as I was experiencing my first tentative steps into relative debt-free-ness, I received an email from a friend about a concert her husband was co-producing in Manhattan to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, called “Music After.” Anything you can send, she said, would help. I gave a small amount […]
Read moreGuess it was bound to happen eventually — the CI is now live on Facebook. Visit the page and click “like” if you have a Facebook account – I’d appreciate it! Periodically I’ll post random photos or links as “bonus tracks” to the regular postings here. Thanks as ever, y’all, for your love and support!
Read moreThis week I lost Annie the Cat. What other name could there be for an orange-haired kitty with a hard-knock life? She came to me about four years ago via my family from the cat shelter and before that from years of street life that had taken one eye and most of her teeth; her […]
Read more1) Seven Meyer lemons from my own little tree, now two years old. (The seventh one is still a little green at the tip, so I’m leaving it on there till the last minute. I think I’m going to use them to make the preserved lemons in Tart and Sweet.) Few things feel better than […]
Read moreLooking at this video makes me wanna holler. College students peacefully occupy a public space. Policemen ordered in by the university chancellor demand they leave. Students remain where they are, linking arms and bowing their heads. A policeman whips out a can of pepper spray and then marches down the line of huddled, bowed, […]
Read more“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later […]
Read moreI believe that what rules us is less the material world of goods and services than the immaterial one of whims, assumptions, delusions, and lies; that only by studying this world can we hope to shape how it shapes us; that only by attempting to understand what used to be called, in a less embarrassed […]
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