fall semester’s OFF the books

With a mere hour and a half to spare, I handed in my last final this afternoon. In my giddiness, I added six possible activities for the few hours before My Sweetie arrives. ** I just looked up after half an hour of joking with my friends via Facebook to notice that the fresh pitcher […]

one way or another

…24 hours from now I’ll get to pack up my ancient Hebrew learning materials. That’s worth something at this point. In February, I’ll be studying Isaiah from the Masoretic Hebrew. With a lexicon by my side! Much more my cuppa than squeezing my brain to regurgitate. I’ll likely be slow as the dickens (Great Expectations […]

persiflage

I’m liking my writing streak. It’s helping me feel like a people, and giving me a small smile to rely on when, for example, I instead rip through the first chapter of theologian H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture in order to set my mind right for an exam question. (I likely could’ve gotten by […]

all God’s people got poems

This is in response to an exam prompt. Usually I wait until after my exam’s been returned to me before posting; however, this is so excruciatingly particular that I’m going to release it before I even hand it in. In deference to my professor, however, you’re going to have to guess the prompt! As a […]

wired for community and meaning

This was always a worry about the American experiment in capitalist liberal democracy. The pace of change, the ethos of individualism, the relentless dehumanization that capitalism abets, the constant moving and disruption, combined with a relatively small government and the absence of official religion, risked the construction of an overly atomized society, where everyone has […]

the decisive clarity that is ennea-five

A colleague and I were chatting over lunch last week… somehow we’d gotten onto Life With Babies (blessedly in the past for both of us). Probably because an earlier topic had brought up feces, and she was refreshed at how blasé I was: “You can always tell a parent; they don’t get grossed out anymore.” […]

gesture

advent, noun. the arrival of a notable thing, person, or event. * –gest-, root. comes from Latin, meaning “carry, bear.” This meaning is found in such words as: congestion, digest, gestation, gesticulate, gesture, ingest, suggest. I’m a fan of anticipation, and the way it can set a person up for gratitude and, let’s face it, […]

odd logic of apathy

I veer in and out of existential meh these days. Mercifully not as uniformly grey as the other day’s, but even with the end of term at hand, “what difference, who cares” keeps washing over. What intrigues me is: however much the default stance of apathy remains at “do nothing,” the logic of “keep doing” […]

small secret truths

I reach into the HTML every time I use an “em-dash” — the long ones that connect phrases, like I’m using here — so that I can properly deploy that punctuation. If I can’t get to the HTML from the tool I’m using, I grit my teeth… and later go back and re-em-dash the double-hyphens […]

Xmas triage: the planning

I’m writing this on January 2, 2018. I started writing this in my head right after Thanksgiving 2017. And I’m saving it to post right after Thanksgiving 2018, because it wouldn’t be very helpful now that most of the holiday dust has settled. Timing is important. Triage, this time of year, is everything. [Ed. note: […]