About the author
Christmas Tunes of Another Sort
Christmastime is here again, which means the return of Christmas music. If you're like me, you have a love/hate relationship with this genre created to be listened to for about five weeks a year. Strangely, it’s also one of the most oversaturated genres. Hundreds of pop musicians have released Christmas albums, and pretty much all of them contain the same thirty or so songs. It can get nauseating to hear the fourth...
Standing Stones
Standing Stones II Like you might label peas, carrots, and beans freshly seeded in the rich brown earth to know the plant that springs up in its season, these standing stones denote the seed of man sown corruptible. Here Charles Gray was cast to earth, the dirt swept over, patted down. There Tillinghast, aged seven months, was gently laid within the furrow, watered with tears of bitter sorrow. Near ...
The Tyranny of Taste
George Eliot once said, “I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.” She would have loved our modern era. It seems that we have more music available to us, and more music being produced, than ever before. iTunes has over 20 million songs for sale, and as of October 4, 2011 had sold its 16 billionth song. Spotify, the latest trending digital music source, has a 15 million ...
Standing Stones
The wall of stones marches on, straight as an arrow into the infinity of forest. It does not care for tree or trail, for it was here before their birth. It stands as a mark of Adam's dominion flowing through New England farmers' veins. Like human bulldozers they wrestled with stone to make an altar to private property and agriculture, their own immovable polit...
The Still Point of a Turning World
Photo by Jennifer Teichman I don't know what possessed me. At the end of this past summer, I agreed to teach five college writing courses on three different campuses for the fall semester. Five writing courses. One of the more interesting periods of my life, it can only be described as somewhat equivalent to trying to juggle while riding a unicycle on a tightrope over a pit of flames. There have been moments whe...
I Travel On
I travel on, following the winding trail of pale orange lights through the darkness. There is a spectral aura about them that makes them slightly less than comfortable. What else would one expect upon a blustery night in October? Shadows rise on all sides, and fallen leaves scratch and tumble across the road, visible for a few moments in the orange glow before casting off into the shadows again. In the car all is s...
Baby Boy Idols
I don't like Justin Bieber. That may come as no surprise, considering that I'm a 27-year-old male, and his audience is teenage girls. It's not that he doesn't have talent — I think he has a decent voice. It's more about what he represents in himself, and furthermore, what he has started in terms of a new trend of teen idols. So perhaps it would be better to say I don't like Justin Bieber the product. Now, cer...
