Monday, February 10, 2025
When examining art that confuses you, things to consider might include asking if you are the intended audience, or if this is a medium you understand. If it isn’t, perhaps ask people who do understand it to explain it to you. Or, you can accept that not everything is for everyone, and that whole universes of art exist that are powerful and brilliant but were not made with you in mind.
Friday, January 31, 2025
On a shelf over my desk, at eye level when I stand, are 8 reference books. They are mostly “How to write English good” books - a dictionary, a thesaurus, Strunk and White, Garner’s English Usage, etc. Because I preach and write occasionally about theological matters, I have an Oxford Annotated Bible there as well. One can argue that Google is faster, and for some things it is. But my goal is not to be faster - it’s to be better.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Trying to figure out blogging outside of the WordPress ecosystem (where I’ve been for ~17 years) is so frustrating. (WordPress as a CMS is so bulky and unwieldy, and their “website builder” direction the last 5 years or so is extremely un-user friendly.) I know I’m entering my grumpy old man phase, but my WordPress-powered blog in 2007 was super-customizable BY ME. With no real tech knowledge, I installed it on a server in 5 minutes.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
“Would you hide an immigrant from ICE?” A friend asked me this the other day. My first thought was, “This is where we are, I guess.” When we read the Diary of Ann Frank in school, something pretty quickly jumped out at me. Their world was populated by two kinds of people: Those who would turn them in to the authorities, and those who would not. Their world did not have the luxury of considering other kids of people.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Tuesday night it hit 14 degrees, which is not unheard of here, but is also not what most days are like, thank God. I didn’t have any meetings planned until lunchtime, so I decided this would be an excellent day in which to sleep in. When I rolled out of bed at 10 minutes to 7 (I am, my wife tells me, bad at sleeping in, but to be fair, that is almost an hour and a half later than I normally get up) I padded into the kitchen and started the coffee.
Monday, January 20, 2025
It’s getting cold as hell tonight, and so for supper I made my platonic ideal of chili, which means it tasted like the chili my mom made when I was young. We served it with Fritos, as God intended, and with good sharp cheddar and sour cream. There is a lot I do not like about the world right now, but on a day where many bad things happened, I managed to make good food and feed my family, and that is not nothing.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
I’m preaching tonight at Safe Harbor Church in Clinton, MS - a church with a large LGBT contingent in their congregation. Tomorrow is the inauguration, and many of us, not just those in that community, are nervous. God of love, God of hope God of our understanding and longing On the eve of the inauguration, We are gathered tonight in this place to seek your will And to learn how to try to do it.
Friday, January 17, 2025
Some days the words just show up. You are practically vibrating as you sit down at the keyboard, coffee cup in hand. As your hands fly across the keyboard, your coffee grows cold, forgotten, as the words crawl across the page. Often when this happens, you have been carrying these words around with you in your head, playing with them as you put them first this way, and then another. Like pieces in a tile puzzle, you decide how they should go, how you make the picture printed on the tiles make sense.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
It is a truism that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a week, and underestimate what we can account in a year. I think we also discount what we have already done. I can, at any given time, feel like I have accomplished absolutely nothing over the last year, despite that obviously not being true. So I have recently begun the practice of what are called in tech circles, weeknotes.
Thursday, January 9, 2025
My wife loves the videos on YouTube by Emmymade. They are a bit hard to describe, but a recurring routine is that Emmy will do taste-reacts, where she eats a food - usually something out of the ordinary, like Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Pudding. She likes lots of these things, and says so. But she goes to long lengths to not say she hates something. A sure sign she was unimpressed is she will say, “That’s not my favorite.
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
In a first meeting with someone yesterday, I mentioned that I was a sixth-generation Mississippian. That lead to questions. I briefly told how Jonathan Hollowell and his family had moved from Wayne County, NC to Marshall County, MS in the 1820’s, to take up land left when the Chickasaw were forced to move to Oklahoma. Her: It’s remarkable you know all that. Was that passed down in your family? Me: No - I had to research it.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
In light of waves hands everything going on, some folks are considering deleting their Meta accounts. I’m not ther eyet, but that is largely becaise of the 19 years and 11 months of work I have put into that site. There is writing of mine on there that exists nowhere else int he world, there are pictures I posted there that don’t exist elsewhere, and messages on there with people who have died.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
My dad died when I was 48. For my entire adult life, every time I would call his phone, it would go the same way: Him: Hello? Me: Hey Daddy. Him: Hello, son. Every. Single. Time. It’s the little things you miss.
Monday, January 6, 2025
“At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned.” ― Cormac McCarthy
Got all the crown molding up and caulked today (so much caulk!) in the kitchen. I’m like 95% done with this never-ending kitchen renovation.
Turns out I told my patrons I would resume the weekly essays on the 4th of January.
Whoever let me do that should be sacked.
(It was me. I’m whoever.)
Friday, January 3, 2025
It’s wintertime. Granted, it’s wintertime in Mississippi, which means it might be 75 degrees and 90% humidity, or it might be 17 degrees. Every day is an adventure! But it’s winter, and the days are short, and the nights are long. For my European ancestors, it would have been a total game changer. Food could run out, you might freeze. But here in Central MS in 2025, it’s just inconvenient.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
I found the first blog post I ever wrote, back in December of 2003. Bless my heart.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
Last night, our neighborhood did one of its annual traditions - the burning of Christmas trees on New Year’s day. It was a magnificent affair, as it always is. Flames that leapt 20 feet in the air. The passing of the trophy for the Fantasy Football league winner. The naming of those who died last year, those who have had job transitions, welcoming of the new neighbors. After the trees had all been cremated, we moseyed inside, where there was hot chocolate and champagne and chili and finger food.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
I knew a guy once who seldom drank, but when he did, it was single malt scotch. His motto was, “Drink less, drink better.” Going into the new year, that is my guiding phrase: Less, but better. Fewer, better projects. Fewer, but better, articles published. Fewer, but better, income streams. Less, but better, work. On this first day of 2025, here is what I’m thinking about: What do I want to do more of?