Over the last two weeks I’ve talked about Susan Boyle more than any other popular culture event in a long, long time. I’ve been discussing it at such length because the whole phenom is so layered—emotionally complex, endlessly arguable, and unabashedly wonderful. I wasn’t the only one captivated by her performance and the global response […]
Gender Diversity and Financial Success
The arguments have been active and unresolved for most of my adult life. The gender issues that continue to lace through our lives, politics, organizations, educational institutions et al will probably never be “resolved” since they aren’t equations with definitive answers. I’m alternately discouraged and encouraged, heartened and disheartened, struck by the fractal, “haven’t we […]
Duffy Gets the Nod
Carol Duffy (AP/Paul Thomas) This late breaking news is fabulous on so many levels. Congrats to Carol Duffy! This report from Rene Rosechild includes a poem by Duffy that was posted here back in October: The post has been held by William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson but until two days ago, never by a […]
Hope: More Than a Condiment
Hope has become a term that can be used like ketchup: With everything. Unless of course you are dining with a hoity-toity foodie friend. Or someone French. But behind its increasingly common usage for everything from the personal to the political, hope has a lot more layers than most words being bandied about in the […]
Bless The Mess
“I’m very uncomfortable with a clean, empty studio…usually, I only clean whatever area I need for a project.” –Bruce Nauman I feel you, Bruce. And your space looks fabulous compared to mine. I have to climb in these days, the rat’s nest having grown to larger than life dimensions. Maybe someday I’ll get back to […]
Meditation on Pockets
Pockets Are generally over or around Erogenous zones, they seem to dive In the direction of those Dark places, and indeed It is their nature to be dark Themselves, keeping a kind Of thieves’ kitchen for the things Sequestered from the world For long or little while, The keys, the handkerchiefs, The sad and vagrant […]
Smart and Thoughtful, and Better Than Donuts
Now this is a great title for a book: What Are Intellectuals Good For? And the first thing that came to mind is the now legendary episode of the Simpsons where an oversized donut falls from the shop’s marquee, lands on the fleeing villain and saves the day to which Homer responds with his signatory […]
The Washed Colors of the Afterlife
A Single Autumn The year my parents died one that summer one that fall three months and three days apart I moved into the house where they had lived their last years it had never been theirs and was still theirs in that way for a while echoes in every room without a sound all […]
Claiming the Poem
I’m running a few weeks behind on my Times Book Review reading, but here’s a piece by Jim Holt from the April 5th edition that rang true. Holt does a compelling job of advocating for memorizing poetry. Imagine that. At a time when so many poems can be accessed online, Holt makes the claim—and I […]
Clear in Hindsight
In the past, when I began to study Zen, it was all a mistake. Wandering through numberless mountains and rivers, I wanted to find something to know. It’s all clear in hindsight. Having learned this, what do I have? Release a crow into the night and it flies flecked with snow. – Dayang Jingxuan Dayang […]