A digital commonplace for a Regular Guy called Charlie Pharis
Today marks the beginning of the first conference/convention/etc. I’ve attended in a long time. I’m a little bit anxious.
It’s not that I don’t like people. I do. I think I have a servant’s heart for people. I do. But as I get older, my tolerance for people’s BS has diminished. I don’t relish the thought of sitting/milling around/interacting with a crowd.
Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. Get ready to send in the rescue team.
It’s taken me almost a month to get used to the pocket sized Moleskine again, but now it just feels right, like the good ol’ days, or something.
Here’s fair warning to all both of you, loyal readers. This post will not be earth-shattering, life-changing stuff. It won’t. It’ll be a couple of random lines, mostly copied from somewhere else to accomplish two things: getting my mind and fingers working, and boosting that word count up to 300 for the day. You’ve been advised, so you can probably go ahead and move on to something more profound and productive.
John Slaughter writes over at The Abbeville Institute about how the South as we know it is being homogenized away by encroaching factors mostly beyond our control. Now, I understand there aren’t a lot of folks who love the South out loud (the result of those “encroaching factors”), but I am one. You can save all your blah blah blah about racism and Lost Causes and backward ignorance and all that. That’s not the South I love and it’s not what I’m talking about here. It is true, however, that Aunt Pittypat (from the Book That Shall Not Be Named—and Film That Shall Not Be Named) was quite prophetic: How, indeed?
But back to Mr. Slaughter:
We are already seeing our rich customs, traditions, and values being overshadowed or discarded in the relentless pursuit of profit and conformity. How many statues and headstones now lie in ruins or hidden away in storage lockers because transplants brought forth by the lure of money and employment sought to turn the South into little New England?
The consequences of large corporations dictating our cultural landscape weigh heavily on my mind. In a world driven by mass consumption and fleeting trends, I can’t help but worry that the vibrancy and authenticity of our Southern traditions may be reduced to mere commodities, stripped of their true essence and significance. The introduction of conflicting values from diverse backgrounds further compounds these concerns, as it threatens to dilute the very core of our heritage and erode our collective identity.
Moreover, the rapid expansion of urban centers raises valid concerns about the displacement of longstanding communities. Iconic cities like Atlanta and North Carolina’s Research Triangle now wield significant influence, overshadowing rural areas and threatening the very fabric that has nurtured our customs and shaped our collective memory for generations.
Reflecting on this situation, I find myself drawn to Christ’s words in Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Are we willing our identity for GDP and manicured lawns? Is increased tax revenue worth forced cultural amnesia? I for one do not want a South that is indistinguishable from Ohio or Illinois.
Nicholas Bate reminds us that stories are powerful means of communicating important material. After all, the Great Storyteller and some who followed in His footsteps have been good examples.
Among the eleven reasons Mr. Bate gives for good stories, this one sits in the middle:
Stories use language not just words; it requires an engaged brain to use a story. And the latter is an increasingly rare commodity on a Zoom/Teams call.
Toni Cade Bambara reminded us to take words seriously.
And finally, this morning, Mitch Chase engages Proverbs 15:30 to encourage us to be, well…encouragers!
And would you look at that? That 300 word goal? Well, it almost doubled! Take that, inertia!
Watercolor painting of coffee cup with steam rising.
This morning, I don’t even know why I’m sitting here at the desk with this screen up on my computer. I don’t really have anything to say, or anything worth saying, and come to think of it, that’s been going on for a while now.
I started out this morning, as I usually do, reading through my RSS feeds on Reeder, but quickly found myself hitting the “Mark All Read” button without so much as skimming the individual posts.
I noted in my notebook that today’s adventures were brought to you in part by the words “melancholy” and “whimsy,” two words that seem as disparate as possible. And yet, for me today, they might be connected. Maybe a certain amount of whimsy just for its own sake would be the cure, however temporary, for the foreboding in my mind these days.
(And maybe, just maybe, all two of you dear readers might want to close our your browser, and forget this post ever happened. It’s not getting any better at present.)
In fact, this post may not really happen at all. It may just be the latest attempt to do the morning pages. I notice I’m currently at 198 words, on the way to 300, and then I might stop without hitting the “Publish” button. Some things might be better left in draft mode, you know?
On a positive note, it was good to catch up with The (Big) Boy for a few minutes yesterday. There’s something about tacos and chips and enchiladas that make things better for a moment. And for some reason, I love hearing The (Big) Boy talk (OK, gush!) about The (Little) Boy. I really want the picture of The (Little) Boy standing (yes…standing!) at the library window. That they’re taking The (Little) Boy to the library warms my heart, and reminds me that I need to get there myself, for a change of scenery and a change of outlook.
It’s a rainy, windy February Friday morning, and the temperature is dropping, reminding me that even though we’ve had spring-like conditions here, winter is not done yet. Here are a couple of those random thoughts banging around in my noggin this morning.
See that image at the top of this post? (Right…there.) I love everything about a vintage date stamp. It reminds me of the libraries of my childhood and young adult years. (Really random recollection: I worked in the music library when I was a wide-eyed naïve freshman music major. It was loads of fun.) My current date stamp setup is simple and old school. I bought this stamper and this stamp pad at our local Staples. On the stamper itself, you rotate the little rubber bands of numbers and letters around an axis, press it onto the stamp pad and apply with varying pressure to your paper. Part of the quirky charm is the slightly off-line alignment of the characters. The other part that appeals to me is the color of the ink, which just about matches the color of my current Pilot G-2 and the nifty fountain pen I got for Christmas. Yeah, I’m a blue ink guy. So there.
Image via Flickr
This morning, for some reason, I found myself thinking of—and missing Spanish moss. I grew up a few miles inland from Savannah, Georgia, and that stuff was everywhere. A lot of people have the notion that Spanish moss lends a spooky air to the locale, but I never saw it that way. I always thought it was another idyllic feature of my South. The way it blew in the breeze, the way it added a “something” touch to the stately oaks. I remember the way it smelled, the way it felt. And I remember people warning us kids that the “redbugs” lived in it. (Actually, the redbugs were chiggers, and according to the great Walter Reeves, they really don’t make their home in the moss if it’s in the trees. Good to know.)
Anyway, here’s a quick feature on Spanish moss in south Georgia.
I’ve been keeping a somewhat regular journal/notebook since around 2003. Coincidentally, that’s about when I started blogging (but not nearly as regularly).
Anyway, I’ve never been real sure about how to format my journal, what to include and leave out, pencil or pen, computer or whatever. Somewhere along the line I came to the conclusion that what I have is not a journal in the classic sense, but more of a commonplace book that includes all kinds of stuff.
Today as I was making my way through the stack o’ stuff in my Reeder feeds, I happened upon this article from The Millions. This part about Lynda Barry helping non-creative people learn to express themselves included this:
I’m turning this over when I come across Lynda Barry’s Syllabus. Barry is a cartoonist, author, and teacher whose recent books are devoted to changing the way people think about their own creativity. Syllabus is based on a workshop Barry teaches called “Writing the Unthinkable.” The main course requirement is keeping a notebook—and not just any kind. Each day’s hand-written entry must contain these items: 1) a list of seven things you did, 2) a list of seven things you saw, 3) something you heard someone say, and 4) a sketch of one item from the “saw” list. Don’t even think about skipping the sketching step.
Much like Jane Van Slembrouck, this approach has been bouncing around in my brain this morning. I think I’ll try it. Here’s my hack, though. I’m going to try to start each day’s entry with Barry’s list, and then keep using the same book for the commonplace items I come across throughout my day. We’ll see.
From my feed this morning…
Remember, design is not how it looks. Design is how it works.
Thanks, Patrick Rhone.
I’ve given a couple of copies of Every Moment Holy as gifts, but never got around to getting one for myself until one came bundled with a new Bible. This collection of liturgies creates a new perspective on the everyday occurrences of life.
I’m especially grateful for the one about coffee. Ned Bustard‘s illustration of the phoenix in the coffee cup is the perfect accompaniment to Douglas McKelvey’s text: the resurrecting power of a new day and the ritual of coffee that makes it so.
Photo: Joestpierrephoto.com via Flickr
It’s now been more than two weeks since my everyday blogging streak ended. That didn’t take long, did it? Time to start a new streak. Not because I have anything particularly interesting to say, and not because I have to follow some rule. But maybe it’s because when I was consciously writing something in this space every day, it gave a sense of purpose to the early mornings. It helped me feel more on-target. And I enjoyed the practice of writing.
Maybe the practice is the most important part.
Anyway, let’s begin again, shall we? A great place to start a new streak would be to unpack those links I began saving here in anticipation of having a daily store of prompts. In a way, the very collecting of the links for later reminds me of how some animals start hoarding food for the long winter ahead, as Bradley Birzer reminds us in this paean to October:
Understood properly, October purges us of our follies and reminds us that death hovers just in front of us. It reminds us that we always stand in time, but at the very edge of eternity. Sometimes, we peer over the edge into the abyss, and sometimes we glimpse the glories of the heavenly realm. But, we always stand on the precipice of eternity, moments and steps away from true reality. Any moment and any step can lead to eternal glory or eternal damnation.
I know the cure: work less! Take a break! Stop doing things and do even fewer things than you think you ought to! Take a week! Take two! Stop all forms of work, go exercise and write, go learn how to do something entirely else. But each time I forget my own advice until I’m at this point, where I am now: basically useless.
Don’t be fooled about who needs fairy tales: every adult who has forgotten what real things are like, who has been a tad snappish lately, who has felt faith slip. Every one of them needs fairy tales—I do, certainly.
Hobgoblins of the extreme left: On “climate change”, “racism”…the whole lot.
It’s all part of the rich comedy of American political life, to be sure, but when the media, instead of reporting on that comedy, lends itself to the propaganda effort of the state by exaggerating the dangers that only the state is supposed to be able to save us from, we are well on our way to a much more serious danger than anything that either the climate or viruses can throw at us: that of a tyrannical one-party state.
