Gary Snyder Tuesday, March 167:30 PMActon Boxborough Regional High School Auditorium36 Charter RoadActon Free Admission Please join us for a special night with a reading by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder. Snyder is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including The Gary Snyder Reader (1952-1998) (Counterpoint Press, 1999); Mountains and Rivers Without End (1997); No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1993), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; The Practice of the Wild (1990);... Read more

LEGENDS OF THE DRUNKEN MASTERS Intoxication and the Spiritual Life James Ishmael Ford 28 February 2010 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island Text Look at the caravan, O guide, all the camels are lined up drunkKing drunk, teacher drunk, friend drunk, all else drunkO Gardener, the musician’s thunder brought forth the cloud of the wine-bearerGarden drunk, meadow drunk, rose drunk and thorn drunkO revolving skies how many times upon this path are wayfarerDust drunk, water drunk, wind drunk, fire drunkThe... Read more

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807. Here’s a little taste of his work, “A Psalm of Life.” Read more

I see that on this day in 1917 the Original Dixieland Jass Band issued the Livery Stable Blues, the first known Jazz recording. I looked it up at Youtube, and bless ’em, they have it! They claimed to be the creators of Jazz, which of course isn’t true. But they were the first to bring Jazz to the world… So, good on them! Apparently they were most famous for their rendition of Tiger Rag… Read more

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The other day I found I had to briefly state my spiritual position. I’ve done this before. And there are certain broad strokes that inform my interior life, but the details fluctuate a fair bit. So, I felt I needed to start from scratch and write something anew. And this is a good practice, I think. In fact there is much made in Unitarian Universalist circles these days of “elevator speeches,” summations of one’s faith that can be shared in... Read more

The Nazi party was established in Germany on this day in 1920. Sets the mind racing. At least it sets this mind racing… I know that one of the cheaper tropes of our time is to liken one’s opponents to Nazis. Looking at clips from Tea Party events and their pictures of the president with Hitler’s mustache says much about both that cheapness and its visceral power… And, I can see the power of thinking of our times and those... Read more

“A Tiger Golfs With Buddha” is an essay by Dr John Tarrant, my principal Zen teacher. Read more

It was a real treat to be able to have a long weekend away. Jan, auntie & me in the Big Apple. Holidays are something that many people don’t get. It requires the confluence of a number of things, some important ones beyond anyone’s actual control. (If you have money and think you “earned” it, you may have worked hard, but nonetheless, you’re fooling yourself. No one deserves the good things, or more correctly everyone does, but only some get... Read more