April 2014
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Somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago, my wife and I acquired a cat named Milo. He came to us by way of one of our sons, who had adopted the cat toward the end of his time in college, and named him Milo after the boy in The Phantom Tollbooth. Our son then took a…
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Michael Hedges Here is the third (not in any significant order) of the Windham Hill guitarists who attracted so much attention (well, relatively speaking) in the late '70s and early '80s. I can't say he is my favorite, but he's pretty spectacular from the technical point of view. Breakfast in the Field and Aerial Boundaries…
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Anthony Daniels, in the February issue of The New Criterion, on the experience of being asked to be one of the judges in a poetry contest: One of the problems for a novice judge is to know how far to take extra-poetic considerations into account, indeed to know what they actually are, especially in an…
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One of my first reactions to Francis was that he has the gifts of a really good parish priest. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, especially the former, spoke strongly and warmly about marriage. And these remarks by Francis are not different in substance. But they have a personal and down-to-earth charm that communicate a…
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Every philosophical school must eventually grow stale, and a hindrance rather than an aid to further thought (though if it has sufficient vitality it may recover). And if it has met with worldly success nothing is more to be expected than that this should happen precisely at the moment of its greatest triumph, when it…
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William Ackerman The founder of Windham Hill and one of its best-known artists, Ackerman's guitar style is less complex than Alex de Grassi's (see guitarist #13 from last week), or Michael Hedges's (next week). But he has, at least on his early albums, a gift for sweet, wistful, memorable melodies. Both these pieces are from his…
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I've thought about this off and on since discussion on this post got into the desert island list area. Following the example of a couple of people in that conversation, I decided to try it with ten books. Here they are; you'll note that I remain unable to make a final choice in a couple…
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If we want to keep company with God, we must be prepared to let him remind us of his ways, not at the times that suit us, but at the times that suit him. If, through our use of the Bible, through our reading and meditation, we let him into our hearts, below the level…
Light On Dark Water 