The carefree time knew no tomorrow. Camus affirmed the moment, “could live in a tree trunk…happily.” Feeling alive was enough. See red-brown leaves, smell roasting chestnuts, warm brandy coursing down your throat. Above all, the unboundedness, freedom to roam or stay, party all night or leave for Spain this afternoon. Splash sheer existence into your bearded laugh, grunting “Yess!” [Read More]
The Value of a Good Story or Feeding the Wolf Within
Wintertime for me has always been a time of introspection and recounting. I grew up in Alaska, in a culture dominated by the traditions, myths and stories of the tribes native to that titanic place. Stories were the textbook and sustenance of many long winters for me. Oral traditions from all over the world are rooted in histories so long that they cannot be mapped.
[Read More]
Slow Food for Thought
In the beginning there was conversation, musings, the exchange of local words. A good story might be gathered in the morning and roasted at fireside talks over many evenings. Words could be risky, we learned, but also nutritious, mind-blowing, and profitable. So people made petroglyphs, cuneiform clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, telegraph cables, CB radios, and smartphones…. [Read More]
The Eagle’s Epitaph – The Multiple Lives of the Screaming Eagle
Although it is as difficult to project as well as portray the cumulative history of a nation or a people through a single individual, it might be rational to attempt a history of media through a particular newspaper. In the case of the North Coast Times Eagle, the history it projected was a local and out at the edge projection of journalism that might seem paradoxical if not antithetical to mainstream media, which claims its history the center stage of American journalism. [Read More]
Jetties of Consciousness
Jetties fascinate me. They teach me poetry and physics, life and death. They represent solidity and evanescence, ambition and ignorance. They are black and jagged, gray and serrated. They whip up a kind of slippery, spraying, salty ocean margarita I love imbibing. If anything can be said to be rock and roll in nature, an oxymoron of course, jetties are it.
Cancer and Climate Change
Recently, a friend of mine sent along a link to a post on the blog Nature Bats Last (what a great name for a blog!), asking me to forward this post to my son (which I did). A couple of days later, my son sent me an email asking if I’d read the piece, and how depressing it was. Well, it took some time, but I finally sat down last night (after finishing filling out financial aid forms for my college-bound son this week) to finish reading this very long and heavily referenced post. [Read More]
Salmon Are My Heroes
With battered grace they thrashed upstream, bashing themselves against the current, rocks, other obstacles, and their own mortality to reach their natal waters. Their ordeal had flayed away their steely overcoats to reveal the muscle that powered their thrust toward the new life for which they would sacrifice their own. [Read More]
Beyond Milk Duds and Fear of Death
Tradition says this is a time of year when matter and spirit mingle. The boundary between darkness and light becomes sheer now, at the end of harvest.
Happy 5774!
The seagulls swooped in immediately to consume our breadcrumb sins, and just like that, we were cleansed! We had just completed the Tashlikh ceremony to conclude the first Rosh Hashanah morning and afternoon service on the North Coast in 50 years, after a wonderful evening service the night before.
For Farah’s mom (whom I haven’t met)
I met your daughter the other day,
New friend to my Willa,
At a gathering for new college students.
Our girl will be far away.
Your Farah is farther from you.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- …
- 20
- Next Page »