Just Charlie

It’s the beginning of my favorite time of the year, the ‘Ber months. I love autumn! I think it’s because I was born in October, and for years and years, I calibrated my life around the academic year. Autumn just always feels more like “new year” to me than January.

Part of what I love so much about autumn is the power of scent that autumn brings or magnifies. I read somewhere that smell is the most powerful of our senses, because it so affects our memories. May be. All I know is I have some very favorite scents or aromas. They aren’t all necessarily associated with autumn, but I’m thinking about them today.

In the image, clockwise starting in the center…

• Proraso Original Shaving Cream. The eucalyptus and menthol notes are clean and masculine. I’ve used this shave cream in conjunction with my Merkur safety razor since 2006 or so.
• Lavender. My favorite flower/aromatic scent. I’m not sure what it is about lavender, but I do love it so! It’s calming and invigorating at the same time.
• Coffee. I’ve long extolled the virtues of freshly roasted, ground, and brewed coffee. I started to pay attention to the stuff in graduate school. I discovered then that coffee was not only a pick-me-up beverage, but a pleasure to be enjoyed with others or by yourself. Thus, it’s worthy of a little more than passing thought. After all, the old adage is correct: Life is too short to drink bad coffee.
• Local bookstores. I love the convenience of online ordering. My Kindle is amazing for its portability. But there’s nothing like browsing the wares of local bookstores. Handling the books, flipping the pages, checking them out before you buy is one of life’s great pleasures. And the aroma of brand-new books is quite intoxicating!
• Baseball gloves. There’s something nostalgic about the leather of a well-worn baseball glove. It reminds me of standing out in right field where nothing really happens in PeeWee league. To pass the time, bored little right fielders somehow discover the wonder 0f holding that open glove up to your face and breathing it in.
• Sharpened pencils. Yeah, I know most people rely on a keyboard of some sort and size these days. I’m a pencil guy. Wooden with graphite. That need to be sharpened, preferably manually. My favorite pencil is Whichever One I Happen to Be Using Today, though like with coffee, the good ones are just better! That picture is the outstanding Musgrave Tennessee Red. Made in the US of A out of aromatic Tennessee red cedar. Freshly sharpened, they are great for writing and amazing to smell!
• Old books. The new books in the local bookstore smell great. Old books smell like wisdom and adventure! That mixture of aromas reminds me of timelessness and permanence.
• Rainy days. I think the official term for someone who likes rainy days is pluviophile. I think that’s what I am. I love the smell of a rainy day, especially in autumn. Oh, and there’s a term for that great scent, too. It’s petrichor.
• Charcoal grills. Oh, yeah…most good food tastes even better with the application of appropriate heat, and there is no more appropriate heat for cooking than glorious chunk hardwood charcoal. It doesn’t matter if it’s beef, pork, seafood, even fruits and veggies, charcoal fire just makes it better. And the aroma of a good grill is one of the most welcoming scents of all, inviting others to come and break bread together.

Well, there’s my take on nine aromas that I dearly love. Any of those resonate with you two readers? What’s your favorite? Why? Any smells remind you of autumn?

Some interesting or inspiring or thought-provoking thoughts from elsewhere this morning.

“Watching a kid get excited about a book is so much fun. Watching mom and dad see that excitement and fan the flame is even more fun.”
– Carolyn Clare Givens, The Warren & The World

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
– Jack London, via Rob Firchau, The Hammock Papers

“As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart put it, ‘Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do.’ Merely complying with the law does not mean that you have behaved ethically.”
– Michael Wade, Substack

Like sign on the futuristic neon wavy pixelated background. Thumbs up symbol. Social media 3d illustration.

In no particular order, here are some things that are making me smile out loud these days…

• Autumn playlists. I know it’s not autumn, but this just feels right right now.
• Fountain pens. I’m mostly a pencil guy, but I love the way a fountain pen writes, and I love the dark blue ink I got with this one.
• OK, pencils. The wood and graphite kind. Like this one. And this one.
• Real books. You know the dead tree, dead octopus kind.
• Libraries, where real books live along with other cool stuff.
• Pourover coffee. Just because life is too short to drink the bad stuff.
• Homemade peanut butter. Easy to make and better for you than the store-bought stuff. NOTE: I don’t use any oil or salt. If those moms were really choosy, they’d make their own.
• Homemade mayonnaise. Basically Alton’s recipe, but with pasture-raised eggs and avocado oil. Easy and better, just like the peanut butter.
• Applegate Farms sausage. This kind, this kind, and this kind.

Stay tuned later for some of the things I don’t particularly love right now. What’s on your list?

Here we sit on the third day of 2024, and I’m writing this at 4:26 am because I have to. 

If I don’t, there mightn’t be time to do it later, what with the return to the office and the daily grind and all. So, here we are.

Now, there’s the key difference. I have to write this to keep up the habit. To keep the commitment I made to myself. To not break the streak. I have to because I want to, and if I don’t…well…it’ll be a lot easier next time to blow it off. And that might apply in something else besides the worthless ramblings of a wannabe blogger. I mean…who would know? Would either of the two of you loyal readers miss it if I didn’t? I don’t think so.

But I would know.

On another note, I finished reading the first book of 2024, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. It’s one of those little business/success parables that are so popular. While it was an easy read, and while I reported in my notebook it seemed rather trite and formulaic, there were some good points. It made me think about saving and authenticity, two things I consider to be important. And now I’m trying to recapture why those two aspects are crucial. Maybe it’s because I’ve struggled so long to look like an authentic servant, that it has become just another finely crafted and carefully maintained mask for the character I want to portray.

And that leads us back to the start of this little screed. I’m writing this because I have to.

And I want to reclaim the servant heart because I have to. Or I’ll continue down the path of Whatever This Is.

Thanks for coming along. One of these days, there might really be something here worth reading and pondering.

It’s that time, readers. It’s time to assess where we’ve been, where we’ve gone wrong, where we’ve gone astray, and where we’ve failed; and to figure out and commit to a way forward, a way to get back on track, a way to improve our lot in life. Yep, it’s the new year, only a day and a few hours old.

I listened to Justin Whitmel Earley on The Habit podcast this morning, and he was talking about habits, daily and weekly. One thought that stuck with me is that habits help us to become free. Freedom doesn’t mean we can do whatever we like, but it means living the way we were created to live.

I need to develop some good habits this year, and the best place to start is with the habits of my heart. So I committed—again—to investing quality time into spiritual practices: scripture, prayer, worship, gratitude, service, etc.

Last year, I joined a couple of my church folks and used the Navigators Bible reading plan. This year, I’ve settled on the Five Day plan from Lower Lights. It’s an interesting format, somewhat chronological.

“Let’s do this, Lord!” I said. And then it hit me suddenly. There really is a Resistance to doing what you know is right and necessary and helpful. That Resistance for me, comes from two distinct dangers.

One is the danger of Distraction. As I started to find the document with the Bible reading plan, I thought for a moment about a quote from the earlier podcast. “Wait,” I said. “I need to get that quote in my head because it will help me as I think about this new old habit. I opened the podcast page on my computer. While I was there, I noticed I only had four minutes left in this particular episode. So I hit the play button and listened to the end. I wrote some notes in my notebook, and started to close out the podcast app and get to my Bible reading.

But there on the podcast episode page were some recommendations for other podcasts I might like. I clicked on one, and as I began to read about the host, I navigated to her website and started looking through the content there. But that wasn’t all. I thought about the design of the website and how I liked the font choices and the layout. So I started trying to find the fonts. And as usually happens for a guy who loves typography,   I started down the rabbit hole of fonts. I didn’t find the exact matches but I did find some I liked and noted for future use.

That’s not the point. The point is I was distracted from what I had intended to do: start a fresh reading plan. Of course, the fonts were not bad things. But they were distractions that kept me from the main thing. In our world, distraction is all around, and it fights our best intentions and keeps us from the parts of life that make it abundant.

But the other danger I faced this morning is the danger of Familiarity. The reading plan starts on Day 1 with Genesis 1–2, Psalm 19, and Mark 1. Having read and studied the Bible as a “professional” for all these years, it’s hard to avoid the “yeah, yeah…I know that already” attitude. It’s as though I said to God, “Give me something new and stop boring me with the basics that I already know.” Wow! What an attitude!

They say familiarity breeds contempt, but more insidious than contempt is apathy. Apathy may not be the best word here, but it’s all I can come up with. Just because we’ve read the words hundreds of times doesn’t mean the words have done their work in our hearts. I know the creation account in Genesis. I know the heavens declare the glory of God and that His words, laws, and precepts are good, corrective, and restorative. I know I need His activity to keep me from sin and make my words and thoughts acceptable. I know Jesus started His ministry, was baptized by John, called his disciples, healed people, and all that. I know all that.

But knowing all that sometimes blocks the power of all that. I need to guard against the apathy of familiarity, and see the Lord’s work as real and active.