The seed of this post was planted when I sent a friend a video of Jason Isbell and the $00 Unit singing “24 Frames” from isolation. As I mentioned last night, he is one of my favorite songwriters. The title of the song refers to the number of frames that go through a projector per…
When I lived in Texas, I loved the annual art show put on by the bluebonnets across fields and highway medians; it is one of the most beautiful sights I know. They are long gone by now. April in Texas is early summer. In New England, we are still wearing our coats. The daffodils and…
The subtitle to David Whyte’s book Consolations is The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. One of the words he unpacks is Istanbul. Though it makes me want to go find my They Might Be Giants CDs, I have never thought of Istanbul–the city or the word–as everyday. Ginger and I got to go…
Two of the great unexplained shortages of our unfortunate isolation is flour and yeast. For some reason, everyone decided not only that they wanted to bake bread, but that they needed enough yeast to last until early 2025. Bread is one of those things you don’t just decide to make. I am quick to say…
One of the ironies of my life is that I am married to a woman named Ginger who does not, for the most part, like ginger–except when it comes in a good ginger molasses cookie. When i think of ginger cookies, I think of ginger snaps with the spice and the crunch, but I am…
I finished the Gospel of Mark in the new translation by David Bentley Hart. I also finished a chapter in Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno, which was written in 1912 and translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch. The two translations are a century apart and aimed at two different purposes, but they…
Tomorrow, April 21, 2020, is our thirtieth wedding anniversary. In the course of our marriage we have lived in five cities and four states, Ginger has served four UCC churches, we have had eight residences, eight Schnauzers, and I have had five different careers. I have lost track of how many people have lived with…
I am still getting used to Sundays being a day with space. Almost thirty years of being married to a pastor has me well-conditioned to Sunday being a work day, even if it’s not my job. But for the last six Sundays, we have had time to be together for meals, for walks, for whatever…
I started reading the Gospel of Mark yesterday as a part of my morning reading time. I got a copy of David Bentley Hart’s new translation and took it as an invitation to dive back into the Gospels once again. Hart is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher. In his introduction to…
We have a standing joke around our house: Ginger likes blow-up movies and I like movies where nothing happens. What I mean is I like character-driven movies. I like characters. Two of my favorite TV shows with great characters are not happening this week. Schitt’s Creek, which is a Canadian Broadcasting Company show that played…