Soul’s Journey Radio

Good conversations are immensely satisfying to all concerned, and yesterday I was fortunate enough to share one of these with Maggie on Soul’s Journey Radio (www.soulsjourneyradio.com).
Maggie - the host of ‘Manifesting With Maggie’ - is such an intelligent and loving presence that it would be almost impossible not to have a wonderful conversation with [...]

Bull Fighting

Catalonia, a large administrative area of Spain, has banned bull fighting. The rest of Spain continues the activity, and so does a large segment of South America.
Bull fighting is an ancient activity in which a very large animal is outwitted by humans and finally rendered into food. The bull-riders depicted at Knossos in Crete [...]

Solipsism

Solipsism is the all-too-human desire to look past difficult things and pretend they aren’t there.
I like this decorated cow image, because it reminds us, perhaps, about agriculture, animals, and our rooted-ness in this earth we ignore so readily.
We could just as easily say it’s a metaphor for the balance necessary in the Arts. We can [...]

Middle of the Night Thought

I woke up with this couple of sentences running through my mind: “Dear Brother Bird at my birdbath, How often do I do anything for you? Yet I am paid every day by your beauty.”
Gifts are where we find them, and if we’re paying attention they’re everywhere.

BP’s Tony Hayward To Go

Yes, the man who is at the top of the responsibility pile for BP’s oil spill will go, in October, to Russia to another job. Reports also suggest that he will get a pension of $1million a year from BP, his normal pay for this year, plus any bonuses the company distributes. Bonuses?? [...]

St. James’s Day

I’m not a big fan of commemorating saints, but this one has an extra meaning for me. On this day in 1941 my father was shot down by the Germans, crashing into the sea off France. He was lucky to survive because not everyone on his plane did. He spent the next four years, more [...]

Raccoons

We’ve all got stories about raccoons invading the house, being generally fearless, and destroying things.
The masked bandits have descended on my backyard several times recently, and have romped, scurried, feasted on the tomatoes, and so on. It’s all rather picturesque, especially their wrestling matches. One night they killed something, with plenty in the way of [...]

Now I know

Seven years ago my best friend of thirty years was killed by religious fundamentalists. They threw him off a roof near the border with Iraq because unarmed news reporters are obviously satanic.
I now know what I would say to his murderers if I were to meet them.
I’d say: “Guess what? We’re all going to [...]

Just Released

Just released, like a tiger from a cage, is ‘Princes, Frogs and Ugly Sisters’. You’ll find lots more about it on this site. The reviewers really enjoyed it, which gave me great pleasure. Tom Shippey, for example, who wrote the back cover endorsement, is an internationally recognized scholar of Grimm and [...]

Bastille Day

Every 14th July the French celebrate Bastille Day - more accurately the day on which the infamous prison of the Bastille was besieged, the prisoners released, and the building sacked. It marked the start of the French Revolution.
But please note Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity took a long and bloody detour before it became anything more [...]