I was supposed to go bowling this evening. Bowling in New England is unlike bowling anywhere else, unless you happen to be in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Up here, we call it candlepin, which means – well, here’s how they describe it at Boutwell’s Bowling Center in Concord, New Hampshire: Candlepin bowling unique to New…
We’ve had a run of beautiful early spring days that have lifted all of our spirits and made us think winter was gone, at least for this year. It’s a lie. I’m sitting in my office watching the flying saucer sized snowflakes swirl around, taunting the Schnauzers and me: there will be no walk to…
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. It will never happen again. The moment I’m waiting for is twelve minutes and twelve seconds after either noon or midnight on December 12 (my birthday) in 2012: 12:12:12 12/12/12. This afternoon, I drove…
Saturday AOL played an April Fools joke on me. Besides posting here, I send my Lenten Journal to a number of folks by email. I had it all typed and ready to send, hit the button and got a message in return that told me to go to KW: RATE LIMITS. I typed the phrase…
It was perfect. Don was taking prayer requests before the pastoral prayer in our ten o’clock service. One of the men in the congregation, a retired surgeon who is full of both gentleness and whimsy, raised his hand. Don called on him and he stood up, his hymnal open. “I wanted to make note of…
Carl and I were the only ones at the restaurant for most of the morning, which is usually the case on Saturdays. He is the function chef and I am the lunch cook. Carl does brilliant work in his kitchen. Not only does he make great food, he does it in a way that he…
It was a great night. We went into Boston about two o’clock because we had to go to the doctor’s office before our evening could begin. Ginger and I are three weeks away from her sabbatical and the Trip of Our Lives to trace the steps of Paul through Greece and Turkey (thank you, Lilly…
Ginger and I are going to the symphony tonight. (Let’s see – I’ll take “Sentences that Milton Rarely Types for $200, Alex.) One of the people in Ginger’s church was kind enough to give us her tickets since she could not use them – with a parking pass. According to the BSO web site, we…
I spent some time this morning reading Life Work by Donald Hall. It’s not a new book to me. When I was finishing up at Winchester and preparing to move to the South Shore, my friend Jack loaned me his copy. Donald Hall was a poet who lived in and around Boston; his love for…
Call the world if you please “The vale of soul-making . . .” I say “soul-making,” soul as distinguished from intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions, but they are not souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. — John Keats, “The Vale of Soul-Making” Those…