Blog
Caring for Words, IV: Politics
The power of language can be directed toward many ends. One of these ends is yet another form of power: political control. In egregious cases, language is openly manipulated, degraded, and deformed. Politically-motivated language distortion, however, is rarely so...
Caring for Words, III: Worse than a Lie?
To call contemporary political discourse “a culture of lies” may be giving politicians, promoters, and pundits too much credit. When words, whether by choice or convention, are detached from shared experience or verifiable reality, speech devolves into amusing games...
Caring for Words, II: Quantum Uncertainty
Words, like quantum particles, will not be pinned down. However meticulously you fix them in the arc of a sentence, they quiver and jump the moment you turn away. They’re fickle and unruly even when you care what – and how – they mean. It’s this quantum uncertainty...
Caring for Words, I: Words Themselves
Καὶ ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖνThe word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14) Christmas, 2017, a celebration of “the Word made flesh,” arrives even as the degradation of our discourse – the way we talk to one another – accelerates....
My Life With Dogs
I read the following post at the Glen Workshop, on August 1, 2017. The essay originally appeared in the Good Letters blog associated with IMAGE magazine in June, 2010, under the title, "The Mutt and Me." "Jaeger," the dog mentioned below, died unexpectedly...
Here Comes Everybody
“And here comes everybody-The closet renegadesThe weary, hungry soldiersFrom the children's lost crusadeHere comes the restitutionWe'd all but given upThis evening we’re content believingThat love will be enough” Joe Henry, “Love is Enough” I can’t say whether James...
A Poem by Malcolm Guite
My friend (and master of the sonnet form), Malcolm Guite, published the collection in which this poem appears in 2012. Inhospitality to strangers is nothing new. It may help to remember that "xenos," the Greek word from which English derives "xenophobia,"...
Splinters of Light We Choose Not to See
I am an interested follower of US politics, and though I occasionally make provisional judgments on certain issues, I hope I’m not partisan in any conventional sense. The narrow and one-dimensional liberal-conservative spectrum so dominant in US political discourse...
Another interview and a book promotion contest
Listen to another interview about Attending Others. This one is from The Last Word on KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio. And for all book-lovers, an old fashioned promotion: Whatever you think about Amazon.com, the number and content of customer book reviews on the Amazon...
The Memoir is Finally Here!
The thing itself, to hold in your hand and read! Read an excerpt posted on the IMAGE blog, Good Letters. And here's an interview about the book, courtesy of WVXU.
