...each read in sixty seconds or less or your money back.
My, but how much bookish-goodness is on display on the cover of the book "The Last American Puritan"! You can see in the left background fine bindings of an antiquarian library. Wouldn't mind having that painting hanging in my bookroom, but you never see reproductions like that for sale on art.com unfortunately. Just folks like John Dean & John Belushi & Marilyn Monroe. (And now I suppose Anne Nicole Smith.)
____
I was amused by the idiocy of this "joint husband/wife confession" idea:
Husband: "Forgive me Father for I have sinned. I've had lustful thoughts about other women."____
Wife: "Forgive me Father for I have sinned. I just knee'd my husband in the groin in a confessional."
I don’t seem to miss a thing when it comes to the falling off of summer’s zenith. It seems coarse, bad form, like noticing every detail of an aging woman. But I can’t help but see that the moon’s placement is farther west at the same time as a month past. And even though on paper the sun is expected to shine till 8-something pm, already at 6:30 there is no sun on the back porch because she’s sitting low enough in the sky to catch all the neighbor’s huge sycamore tree.
But who could have regrets? Time is so perfectly fair. The summer is parcelled in exactly the same measure to the Southern Hemisphere as the Northern and I’ve had plenty of time to run and bike and garden and just read. Sure I wish I’d made it to one Reds game this year but then they have played so bad. Until lately. And there's always September.
____
The hummingbirds still come to the feeder even if the lightning bugs are gone. We have two females, one named “Curious” for her tendency to look around while feeding. The other I think is named “Scaredy” since she won’t actually sit at the feeder but prefers to gather the sugar water with wings beating in preparation for foes.
___
Heard '80s song Chaka-Kahn on the radio and my mind slipped a gear, propelled backwards in time without my consent and I trod somewhat fearfully on the long-past ground thinking that I could fall into bad habits again merely by hearing a song.
_____
In TIME's Mother Teresa piece, there's the line: "She wrote in 1951 that the Passion was the only aspect of Jesus' life that she was interested in sharing: 'I want to ... drink ONLY [her emphasis] from His chalice of pain.' And so she did, although by all indications not in a way she had expected." I suppose this goes under the heading "be careful what you ask for", right next to the Sons of Thunder saying that they could drink the Cup Jesus would drink, without knowing it meant martyrdom. But it's consoling and unnerving at the same time; Christ isn't as complacent as we are. That He acts beyond the threshold of what we even can ask for is a good thing in the long run, which is the only run that matters. Easy to say I know. Being something of a glutton for punishment, I emailed the Baptist pastor my previous thoughts on the darkness of Mother Teresa and he responded like this:
I am absolutely astonished at the "spin" people are putting on this!!! I simply can't believe what I'm reading. To live a life devoid of peace, joy, faith - is nothing to be admired. Her works, absolutely - but the life described in her writings is the polar opposite of the entire New Testament.But all of this is just a preface to Steven's marvelous post, in which he quotes an author saying, "Preparing us for a love we cannot conceive, God takes our lesser notion of love from us one by one."
I am blown away by the rationalization I am reading from people simply trying to defend the undefendable.
As I said - I am truly astounded. And I honestly, sincerely mean that.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!
____
The great Budweiser man, Jonah Goldberg, (he formerly of simple tastes) is going high rent on us. He admits to be something of a "foodie" now and actually watches one of them thar cooking shows. I can understand where he's coming from though. As you age, fast food just doesn't work as well as it used to. Food was never that important to me but as I get older I get fussier. To be pleased with O'Garlic Poor Boys seems… well, like a long time ago.
____
Had to deal with another Ford recall, this time some sort of possible leak that could result in an engine fire and the burning down of your house. That’s all. My wife was necessarily paranoid for our dog's sake and the ‘black pony’ (my car) was relegated to outside the garage until fixed.
____
I like camping but tend to like the idea of it more than its execution. It's surely too harsh to say that "camping is work punctuated by tedium" but it's too good a line not to make a post titled "Sixty Second Vignettes", what with small barrier to entry.
____
Speaking of things that sound good on paper - how about golf? I generally play once a year and that pretty much satisfies the itch. Played my sister and father and sis played well. I think it’s her shoes. Very classy looking. I played much better than expected which leads me to believe the secret to golf for me is not playing it very often. The less I play, the better I play!
Never has mankind devised or even thought of designing a more pleasing golf course than the little 9-hole par three we enjoyed. I like how it’s intended to get you to the 19th hole (in this case the 10th hole) very quickly. I think every bad golfer can agree that that’s the true goal of golf – to get it over with and have a beer in the clubhouse. Now don’t get me wrong, I love golf. I love the feel of the golf club, the swing, the arc of the white ball over green valleys, the straight and true drive and the occasional good putt. But when I’m actually doing it I often love it a bit less, which usually comes as a surprise. Golf teaches you that all highs are transitory and all lows likely to persist. (I jest.)
No comments:
Post a Comment