On the left side, under Pages, there are some photographs of Bob, taken by his good friend Mark Garvin and an ode for Bob on his 60th birthday, written by yours truly.

There was something strangely poached about the way things looked to Hurgelrood that morning. The sun had dawned like wet yolk on the toasted horizon. The wheels of passing cars seemed glazed and greasy like bad donuts. Everything he looked at suggested a repugnant breakfast.
He could not recall if he himself had had [...]

If my mother could request it at this time, she would probably prefer a wake to a dirge. She was always vivacious, quite capable of having fun, though sometimes impatient when she was not having it. So I would not wish by these proceedings to make her deal soul fidget too long in [...]

Winter Poem
Upon this hill the moon-glazed spruce are slumped
And shake their shoulders where the snow has clumped;
Stern winds have flailed and scruf the creek with ice,
While on its branch the hunched owl dreams of mice.
The poet speaks of Winter and its chill,
Which now, as elsewhere, visits Chestnut Hill,
Its intersections all askid with cars
And red-cheeked locals [...]

I wonder if they’ve taught you yet in school
About the wondrous thumb of Finn MacCool.
He was a wild and shaggy Irish man:
His shouldergirth comprised so great a span
It might as well have been a bridge of boulders;
And slung across the width of those great shoulders
Was his shillelagh, fashioned from a bone
As hard and hefty as [...]

With rag about my eye and fiddle tune,
I sing no portrait of the scenic world –
Let clouds scud by, and flowers importune,
Or banners in bright sunlight be unfurled
– I shall not mention them, nor pause to count
So many images that grace the eye,
But sniff snuffed wicks before the morning mount,
And taste the thought that blind, [...]

The snow is on the barren twig,
The sun not long to tarry,
Yet through the year to nadir come,
Let’s drink and make us merry!
For Janus is a roguish wit
With beard behind and fore,
Who needn’t pause to drain his cup
From dining on the boar.
So let us toast the babe in straw,
Our winter breath a-steaming
Like nostrils of the [...]

Old Ireland did once with grim serpents abound
That slept in the grasses and weeds,
Who were known in the pubs by their sibilant sound,
Though disguised in thick jackets of tweed.
They plotted and schemed, and seduced and beguiled
–they were always a treacherous crew:
at humankind’s hardships they cynically smiled,
as their tongues flicked the foam from their brew.
Their tongues, [...]

More from the religioblogathon–this in response to Kile insisting that intelligent design is scientific…

“It is quite amazing to me, the more I read on these topics, how you could possibly advance your intelligent-design position as in any way “scientific”. There is no contribution to the scientific understanding of nature; the only motivation is to [...]

Bob spent many hours over the past year thinking about online conversations he was having with Kile Smith about religion, spirituality, mystery and the human condition. He called this the religioblogathon and the postings are at www.donsilver.net/discuss. At a certain point, he started sending his thoughts to a Buddhist, Genro, to whom this [...]