offbeatcompassion

I had to laugh when I picked up a travel brochure in our Airbnb room that included an “Insider’s Guide” to restaurants and other tame fare. Insider? Yeah, me and 4 million other readers. I ...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/04/28/bermuda-parrots-parrot-fish-horses-dogs-and-the-pink-panther/

Not that I am trying to front run any grief specialists out there, but so far a Google search of Taylor Swift’s reference to the famous Kubler-Ross model for the 5 stages of grief does not yiel...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/04/08/taylor-swifts-music-to-grieve-by/

“Why are you just sitting here, staring at me like one of my cats?” This is what a patient nearing the end of his life said to Rabbi Susan Landau Moss during one of her visits to him. In this...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/03/11/a-chaplain-in-wolfs-clothing/

The three Earthling news reporters from Newark, New Jersey couldn’t imagine what the Perfect Worlders in a galaxy sort of far away did for news. What would they report on if there were no wars,...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/short-story-talking-past-each-other-one-galaxy-at-a-time/

If I’m feeling compelled to look into an author, usually the title is what pulls me in. This time, it was Leaf Seligman’s bio, and of course her first name. The bio reads, “Leaf Seligman co...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/yep-this-author-qualifies-offbeat-yet-compassionate/

While I was in the waiting room of my gynecologist, I wanted to distract myself from the impending discomfort of the doc’s examination. So I initiated some superficial banter with another patie...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/02/08/the-innards-of-a-conversation/

If you were to find a way to ask any animal besides humans to stop and live in the moment, to savor all the beauty they see in the forest and the sea, and the food they eat and all that, I bet a ...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2024/01/27/why-its-so-damn-hard-to-be-in-the-moment/

Guest blogger Dia Osborn fits the bill of guest posts that are offbeat or quirky, yet compassionate. Here is one she wrote years ago from her blog, The Odd and Unmentionable: During a chat over c...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/what-color-is-dying-hint-its-a-trick-question/

It’s as if Edna Ferber had pried open my brain and learned of my thoughts and sensations before she created her Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel So Big. I read on, wondering what else I might learn...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2023/11/11/edna-ferbers-fervor-in-so-big/

The local New Jersey poet Lillian Washington could not shake off a disturbing dream she had, even hours and days afterwards, until she locked it up into a poem and thereby banished it for good. F...

https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/horror-of-horrors-halloween-poem/