Used to, if I was driving around Austin in the late afternoon, I listened to the Dave Ramsey Show. His tagline was something like, “Putting the personal back into personal finance.” I enjoyed how he combined warmth with a blunt “Snap out of it!” demeanor. I liked hearing tired and worried people become a little […]
“It may seem strange to say so, since we live at a time of cultural abundance and flowering amateurism, when the tools of creativity seem to be available to anyone with a laptop. But the elevation of the amateur over the professional trivializes artistic accomplishment and helps to undermine the already precarious living standards that […]
Recently I was mowing and listening to Conversing, Fuller Theological Seminary’s podcast. The chief topic of the episode, designing a well-lived life, fit nicely into all the nooks and crannies of my brain, but it was Dave Evans’ offhand telling of Adam and Eve’s story that knocked the breath out of me. Those of us […]
Pulling out the ladder and setting it up. Two not-very-interrupted hours at home, with no more-urgent tasks. Temperatures below 85 degrees F, or 3-inch grass. Three required establishments within five minutes of each other. No half-and-half. Or no steel-cut oats. Q: What are the necessary pre-conditions for me to: trim limbs from our trees handle […]
I like podcasts when my body is busy, because my mind always needs new furniture. Listening to a couple of primary-at-home parents who are entrepreneurs checking in with each other about the nuance and realities of their lives was great…even though that’s no longer my season, and oh yeah, the parents speaking are male. (Why […]
Yeah, evening writing isn’t my best. Today I didn’t have a spark to carry around in a jar, so I’m standing in the dining room staring into the kitchen thinking, “Now what?” Yes, that could be a reference to my dinner plans as well, but following the practice of most primary cooks, My Sweetie left […]
My sweet friend E flashed me her engagement ring last week. She and I were working alongside each other during the time she first met her sweetie, so it’s delightful to see how that seed has blossomed and flowered. Plus I like to think an exchange E had with me and my boss back then […]
I started thinking about Alex Tizon’s article in the June 2017 Atlantic long before we paid the $9 (“Nine dollars?!? I could have bought a book!”) to bring home a print copy last Saturday. I was standing in the shower Sunday, arranging my thoughts as if I were writing them, when I thought: The Tizons […]
I wrote one version of this post at 6:30am, in my head. Since I didn’t get up to type, I was sleeping, and i don’t remember what I “wrote.” As far as I can remember. I was happy to get up and know that I’d “written,” though, since I’d barely written anything all week. One […]
” [I’ll] Tell you stories of our fathers and the glories of our house Always told a little slower, ever south —Drive By Truckers, “Ever South” It’s what we Southerners do: tell our stories. To our children, to the new listeners, to each other, to ourselves. Our stories tell us who we are, whose we […]
