Before 2016, much of my car-time involved taking a girl or two to an activity. For me relaxing in the car means talking about whatever’s on my mind. Or her mind, or whomever else’s mind. My nest is empty; no one’s in my car. But my musing doesn’t quit just because of that. So now you’re the one “Driving With Daughters!”
Bedtime books must be interesting but familiar. Unfamiliar books want to be read to the end, which is two or four hours after bedtime and wrecks the delicate sleep patterns. Familiar books can have momentum without drive — can hold focus/attention without waking the brain. Bedtime books need to be books, not magazines. Bedtime books […]
There is no essence, no boundary, or centre, to theopoetics. This may becheerfully acknowledged even as we continue to debate and create ‘as if’ the fabrication we are engaged in could be compared to building a house rather than inventing a fiction. Heather Walton, “Creativity at the Edge of Chaos: Theopoetics in a Blazing World.” […]
Things I could do when I couldn’t focus, paid-work edition: Attend meetings. Make useful contributions in meetings. Take notes. Review email. Answer email. Field tech support requests (“I can’t print!” “Would you tell me what you see on your screen?…”). Annotate tech support tickets and mark them completed. Update project plans. Skim trade mags. Things […]
I’m out in the garden (the backyard/the patio) this morning for Reasons. The weather thus far is cooperating — mostly overcast, frequent breezes, no moisture from the sky as of yet. I had trouble engaging my routines this morning. Yesterday was full routine-fail, as were the two days before that. My analytic brain wants to […]
By encouraging the consumption of more meat…, of refined carbohydrates, and of trans fats and chemically extracted oils…, the government-endorsed dietary model may have led to more deaths than it claims to have prevented. Mark Bittman, Food Matters (2009). p57. I was rereading Food Matters — good book, though Michael Pollan’s roughly contemporaneous Food Rules […]
If you know the John Fogerty song, and know how much I love the movie Bull Durham, you’ll think I’m writing about baseball. But that would be silly, because I know just enough baseball to remain my mother’s child and no more. I’m writing about my personal trainer. Or the adult swim team I belonged […]
This is not, directly, my story. This is a story that belongs to my mother, peripherally, and her father more directly. Or it’s a set of fabric strips from old shirts that we traditionally stitch together about like this, adding some batting and family backing to make it a little more sturdy. I never lived […]
I am (and have been) fine — physically, emotionally, daily. I wrapped up the semester well, sudden pivot to distance-learning notwithstanding. Clear-eyed, I knew what I wanted to put in place in June to support the rest of my (COVID-emptied) summer and how to go about doing so. I have perhaps done a tithe of […]
Look at the large letters I’m making with my own handwriting! —Apostle Paul, Galatians 6:11 (CEB) So since “being the people of God” didn’t stop when Austin TX started sheltering in place, and since the truth that Jesus Christ lived, died, and was resurrected is still true, Christendom will be observing Easter on Sunday, and […]
Many, many folk — good historians at heart — are saying: as the pandemic wraps around the globe, write a sentence or so each day. That way three generations or so into the future can know what was on our hearts, and not just what was on our minds, or what we said to chivvy […]
