Category: Blogging (page 1 of 4)

August 11, 2023 / 0 Comments

Thankful Friday…

Ooh! Ooh! Two posts…in the same month! And on the same day!

As I was writing the ol’ Morning Pages this morning, I began to think of how Fridays are the perfect time for reflecting on The Week That Was, The Weekend That Is To Come, and The General State Of Things In This Life As We Know It. (Looks more epic if you capitalize it like a title, no?)

Anyway, there are several items that make me thankful today, even in the midst of—especially in the midst of—these topsy-turvy times in which we are called to live. Here we go. Add your own if you’re playing along.

Gooey, cheesy ziti al mondo at our favorite reliable American Eye-talian joint is better when it’s shared across the table from My Favorite Hoosier. Oh, and keep the rolls coming, please.
Playlists. Yeah, yeah…I know. More AI-generated “music” than real artists sometimes. But I’m very thankful for the people who have the knowledge and the time to curate and share their playlists. Right now, for instance, Tsh Oxenreider’s “Deep Work” is powering this blog post. Thanks, Tsh!
And finally, this story showed up in my Twitter…I mean…X! feed. The original feature was in 2021, so I don’t even know if Caitlin and Street Brew Coffee are still a thing in Toronto, but it sure made me smile out loud this morning. Turns out Caitlin is still pumping out coffee and good vibes!

Remember (he says to himself)…you’re pretty much going to find what you’re looking for. This quote from Katherine May’s Enchantment is a sound observation…

Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them.

So today, dear both of you readers, make your Friday a day for looking for and finding The Good Stuff that’s all around, the Stuff That Makes Your World Wonderful.

July 18, 2023 / 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2023…

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.

How Does it Profit the South?

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.

Eleven Reasons for Stories

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!

February 17, 2023 / 0 Comments

Date Stamps and Spanish Moss…

Date stamp of February 17 2023 at top of notebook page

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.

January 20, 2023 / 0 Comments

On Journals and Whatnot…

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.

October 25, 2022 / 0 Comments

Starting a New Streak…

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.

Take a break, idiot.

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.

Who needs fairy tales?

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.

Seven fears that kill your joy.

October 7, 2022 / 0 Comments

Autumn Morn…

Tread lightly in the Autumn morn,
For heavy is the burden you might have borne…

September 27, 2022 / 0 Comments

The Clock is Ticking…

It’s about twelve hours after I normally log in and think about writing something in this space. Today started with my nose to the grindstone so to speak, and it’s been hard to find even a few minutes to stop and scribble. But I’m watching the clock and I realize if I don’t get something—anything!—down, I will have already blown the commitment to put some words here every day.

A couple of things I’m pondering…

I read on Drudge about a Chinese study which discovered that loneliness and/or unhappiness speeds up the aging process even more than smoking. Wow! I might be in trouble! It turns out the “article” is actually an infomercial for some anti-aging product. But I kind of get it, I suppose. We were created for community, and we were designed for joy, so all kinds of things can happen when either of those is not optimal. The last couple of years, working from home almost exclusively has made me feel like an old man, a hermit even some days. The key may be finding some companions, some Inklings like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had. Friends who will listen to your work, give you honest feedback, and still enjoy your company around the table.

Speaking of the Inklings and such, I’m a big coffee guy and have been for a long time. But recently, I’ve begun the habit of tea at 4:00 pm. Maybe just to feel some camaraderie with Jack and the others. I went through the stash I had in the pantry pretty quickly. My staples, when I’ve had tea over the years have been Earl Grey and English Breakfast, with the occasional and obligatory herb teas like Celestial Seasonings’ Sleepytime. Today, I restocked and got some Darjeeling. It bills itself as “lighter and woody.” All I know is it was pretty good on the veranda…I mean…the front porch this afternoon. It was the great Bilbo Baggins who reminded the dwarves, “Tea is at four every day, and you need not bother to ring the bell.”

Side note about tea: I just realized I used the word “stash” in that paragraph. I have some green tea called Stash. It’s the best green tea I’ve had, but the name makes me smile out loud sometimes.

Well, the clock is still ticking, and I’m not quite at the 500-word mark. But at least I didn’t miss today. And who knows? I might get some more inspiration before I call it a day for real. After all, not only did I not write dark and early, but I didn’t read or make my way through my Reeder feed. (Oh, look…the word count is 442…447. I might make it to 500 yet!

I’ll leave you with this random thought among all these others. I came late to the Game of Thrones party, but I started at the very beginning with House of the Dragon. One thing I’ve noticed after just six episodes? There are no honorable characters in the show. There aren’t even any sympathetic ones. GoT had the only honorable man in Westeros, Lord Eddard Stark. And there was, of course, Jon Snow. But HotD? Not a single one!

Looky, looky…over the 500 mark! Thanks for playing and thanks for waiting with bated breath, checking back and refreshing the page to see if I really was going to make it a daily habit. So far, so good.

Peace.

September 26, 2022 / 0 Comments

What Shall We Write About Today?

That is the question facing us today, dear readers—all both of you—as we contemplate the goal, the intention, the vow of posting something every day in this space in tribute to my upcoming birthday. What shall we write about?

I could write about The Dream. Yep, the one I had last night. The one that awakened me with a start, one of the most disturbing and fearsome dreams I remember having. That one. The one with the maniacal laugh and crazy eyes. The one that involved not only my son, but my grandson. I’ll spare you all the details for now, but let’s just say I may have actually screamed my son’s name in real life when I woke with a start. It was that terrible and that realistic.

I could write today about the Ongoing Discombobulation that seems to characterize life these days. Maybe that will come soon. Or maybe it will go away soon, and be replaced by something more productive and pleasant.

I could write about the latest picture of the grandson, mad about his food, but looking like an intense rock star singing into his spoon as a microphone.

I could write about the joy of starting The Chronicles of Narnia over again and catching up with where the grandson is hearing the tales for the first time in his nightly reading/listening time. I could write about how happy it makes me that my son is introducing his son to the wonders of Narnia at an early age.

I could write about how I got some words stuck in my head during this morning’s predawn jaunt, and how I pondered the difference between “shore” and “bank” as the boundaries of bodies of water. Because I tend to geek out about words like that sometimes.

I could write about the fascinating account of one woman’s bicycle adventure from Ireland to India in 1963 (via Maria Popova, natch).

I could write about my put-out-ness (there’s a word for you!) with people who should be grateful for your work on their behalf, but instead pile on incessant demands for impossible results. I could even ponder why I can’t say no to those demands.

But I think, for this moment, at least, I’ll leave all that and think about the scent of books. Real books, I mean. The dead tree/dead octopus kind. One of the most common reasons bibliophiles give for preferring real books over, say, ebooks, the unmistakable aroma, the smell of them. There is a technical term for that aroma, I think, but I can’t put my cursor on it right now. Suffice it to say, the interwebs are rife with articles, posts, and reminiscences about the comforting scent of books. Many of those commentators limit their appreciation to the smell of old books, but I’m quite partial to the smell of all printed books, old and new. Some kids remember the amazing experience of holding that brand-new catcher’s mitt up to their face and taking in the smell of fresh leather, and how that was part of the game. (True confession: that was me, too.) But books! The essence of paper and ink, the feel of the deckled edges…these all add to the tactile adventure that beckons the reader and the lover of craft and art.

That’s what I’ve got on my mind this dark and early Monday. I think I’ll take a few minutes and sniff some books.

May 4, 2018 / 0 Comments

Details…

Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

It’s all about the details. The little things matter.

Is the colon aligned vertically when representing time? Or is it sitting on the baseline in the default position? Did you even notice? Did you change it? What about the dash between times? Did insert the n-dash or just settle for the hyphen key and call it good? What about the kerning? Did you follow the style guide?

Did you take the time to make the shadows realistic on the composite image? Or did you just duplicate the layer and position it somewhere in some sort of alignment? Did you think about where the light would actually hit? Did you make the shadow black instead of a gradient of grey-blue?

Did you check your spelling? Your punctuation? Did you leave the passive voice, or did you even think to re-read the copy?

Did you leave the piece of paper towel on the restroom floor? Did you send the thank-you note? Did you remember your customer’s name?

The details do matter. The little stuff does count. The little things do add up to big things. And if you do the little things consistently, it will become a habit. And the habit will become excellence in practice.

August 20, 2014 / 0 Comments

Disclaimers…

Image: Peter Rukavina, https://flic.kr/p/4H9gCb

I’m kicking around a blog post (I know…gasp!) on race, what we can and should learn from the happenings in Missouri, and our response, and I realized I need at least 13 disclaimers just to set up the post. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

You didn’t ask, and you’ll probably roll your eyes, shake your head, shrug, and say, “Who cares?” But here’s the list of disclaimers so far, in no particular order of importance…

I’m a white, middle-aged, Southern man.
I’m conservative (in the classic sense, not the current media caricature) in my political thought, leaning hard toward libertarianism.
I’m not a conscious “racist,” although my standard, throwaway line is: “I’m pretty convinced the HUMAN RACE is superior to all others on the planet.”
I’m a Christ-follower, a Jesus-apprentice. Not a very good one most of the time, but I try.
I’m cynical (at best) about government “fixes” to problems in our society, believing that often, the “fix” is worse than the purported problem.
I’m an “individualist,” believing that the individual and his or her character is superior to the GroupThink that pervades our contemporary society.
Right now, I don’t have any close friends who are African-American (or black or people of color, or whatever the current term of choice is). Oh, and I don’t say that to be flippant…I’m just not sure what the preferred nomenclature is today.
That said, I don’t bear any animosity toward black/African-American/people of color as a rule (see disclaimer about the individual above). I just haven’t created or been availed of the opportunity to befriend them.
That also being said, in two of my three current jobs, I have the opportunity to interact with black/African-American/people of color. I think I do OK in those interactions. (They might think differently, but you’d have to ask them.)
Come to think of it, I have to admit I don’t have many of what I would consider “close friends” of any ethnicity. (That’s another issue for another time.)
I do consider myself a teachable learner, who is open to learn from the perspectives of others those with whom I may disagree and with whom I see eye-to-eye.
I believe the old adage: “All truth is God’s truth.”
I’m a lover and not a fighter. I would prefer to find common ground and get along than live in open hostility and disagreement.

Stay tuned…