Carolina wren outside my office window definitely just got “The Dreidel Song” stuck in my head.
Carla, a middle schooler, and I collaboratively created the above design for our local municipality. KB Offset printed it, and it now stands as an 8' × 4' banner posted along PA-26 outside the township administration building.
Here’s the municipal webpage on the subject of College Township’s sesquicentennial.
Inspired by part of this interview with Lisa Silvestri, the author of Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change, which I may read soonish with my friend Neill—after I finish:
- Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, which Ruth and I both got excited about roughly simultaneously and thus co-purchased (co-purchasing books—what a fun idea! an interpersonal nano-library…),
- parts of Stricken by God?, another of Neill’s recommendations after he read my essay about the Cross, and
- Watchmen, recommended to me by both my son and my wife—
here is a list of what bothers me:
- barriers to walkability,
- the predominance of solo, receptive, junky entertainment,
- words whose poor definitional boundaries cause moral problems,
- faulty exegesis,
- parroting, and
- roadkill.
I miss the white pages ✏️ 🎤 🎵
I hereby plead with governments, universities, and commercial real estate developers: If you’re going to erect a public clock, please make sure it keeps time. Otherwise, you’re just littering our built environment with noble-looking embarrassments whose only effect is to remind us that everything is broken and most of us don’t care.
headlamp + summertime + living next to a large park → reading a book while meandering outdoors at night 🔦📚
We measure distance more frequently in units of time than in units of length. Why? What does that say about our culture?
Resolved: One creative goal at a time. Current goal: Legalize backyard hens in College Township.
I don’t usually like what Katherine Watt writes. But this illustration is dynamite good.
“Let the seasons begin,” sings Beirut in my head as I wake up. A fair enough piece of advice for a time when I’m upset that I’m not doing anything with my life after Dylan and Noah leave.
For posterity, I’d better explain: Fostering Dylan and Noah lent me noble purpose. Sending them back their parents removes that purpose, which sends me reeling. It doesn’t help that my friend comes over last night with a young man who is determined to build physical environments conducive to the formation of Christian community, after spending the last few days touring the town talking to community-minded folks like Christian Baum of co.space, Joel Martin, and the staff of the College Township government administration, so as to pick my brain about Christian community, something about which I don’t know much. I leave that conversation and go to bed angry that I’m not doing anything “kingdom-minded” or noble.
You, God, or my subconscious mind tells me as I wake up, “Let the seasons begin.” For goodness’ sake, it’s only been two days since the boys have gone home. Give it a break. Let the seasons, the natural turn of time and the changes it brings, begin. Plus, you know you want to focus on the family these days anyhow.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was a day all four of us attended Clearwater Conservancy’s annual meeting at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Gray’s Woods. Pure Cane Sugar provided background music. We enjoyed grilled shrimp, baked squash, couscous, apple cider, and more. Betsy Whitman got to know me and vice versa a little after the business part of the meeting was done. But I pick this gathering as my thing to share from today because I came home feeling a shade lonely and jealous of Carla.
Why? Because our lives are structured in a way that facilitates her enjoying hours of leisure.
To be clear, I’m not saying she doesn’t pull her weight around the house. I’m really just saying she gets to be more social—both in a pure sense and in a project- or cause-oriented sense—than I, by a long shot. I’ve spent the whole week without having really touched or talked with anyone other than my three favorites.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you that Carla was reelected today. I’m glad for her and proud of her.
Yes, Carla. Yes it was. You are pretty great. Congratulations on your victory.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.
I told her I love having her over.
Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.
If, in my old age, you asked me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was the day I metaphorically threw my hands up in the air about whether I have a principled reason for supporting Friends & Farmers Food Co-op: I don’t. I support the co-op because I enjoy hanging out with those kinds of people at the kinds of functions they hold.
I could go into my reasons for suspecting that “buy local” is a slogan with slippery ethical foundations (hint: for a start, it smacks of egogeocentrism), but I think I’ll leave it at this: I buy local for the pleasure of it. That’s all. It is a luxury. It makes my community a smilier, more human place.
If, in my old age, you asked me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was a day I had intended to go hear Paul McCartney play at the Bryce Jordan Center—his first and probably last concert in State College, PA—but had neither found someone to go buy scalped tickets with (Carla was at a Council meeting) nor communicated well with the babysitter, Molly Hunter, who wasn’t going to have a ride home. Top that off with a $475 bicycle maintenance bill earlier that day, and you get me canceling with the babysitter at 6:30 p.m. It helps that I’ve never cared much for arena concerts and that the babysitter had four big exams happening all the next day.
Such is life when you prioritize: Some things go neglected. And very often they are the things that should go neglected.
The most important thing to happen to me today is that I asked the church to pray for me that my anxiety that lingers and pops up unbidden (for instance, upon looking at an old photograph in the CD insert for Down the Old Plank Road, I felt anxious that the people in the photograph weren’t alive any more), that You, God would take it away. Most memorable among the prayers was that Dave asked you to “talk loud.”
Oh, and I want to watch all ninety episodes of Curious George with the kids via Greta’s Netflix account. And I won a few golf passes by winning the donut-on-a-string contest at Millbrook Marsh’s annual Historic Harvest Festival.
I spent the entire afternoon torpid. I mean, I took a nap on a picnic tabletop today during a church visit to Talleyrand Park. What is it about Sundays? Is this a lethargy I can end by flipping a switch in my brain? Tea this afternoon didn’t help.
The best solution is probably to just go ahead and take the nap.
I enjoy watching my family do things I suspect other families do not but which I consider healthy. In this photo, all three of them are leaning out or about to lean out past the boardwalk rail in searching of jewelweed pods ready to pop.
It turns out the seeds are edible!
Spending time with those good friends of ours in Pine Grove Mills is like eating comfort food.
To our surprise and disappointment, Council voted 3-2 to reject the ordinance as written. That settles the matter until at least after the next election; to insist Council take the matter up again any earlier would be inconsiderate and likely rejected.
How they can go from a consensus agreement at the previous public hearing to keep the chicken ordinance alive, directing staff to make specific modifications, to a 3-2 vote at this public hearing to completely reject the ordinance, staff having made the very modifications they specified, is baffling.
I am very proud to walk town with my children. Among several reasons that came to mind this evening, Éa insisted we take this photo of this 150-year-old magnolia tree planted by Fred Waring, the northernmost species of magnolia—because she loves her friend whose middle name is Magnolia.
Childhood’s Gate Children’s Garden at the Penn State Arboretum is a wonderland. Thank you for building it.
But please tell me this sign is meant to be ironic.
For the second consecutive year, I’ve been referred to Chris Kiver by an outstanding member of the State College Choral Society to audition for the Orpheus Singers: Colleen emailed me today about it.
Other than the remarkable depth to which my telling her as an aside that I wasn’t going to sing with the Choral Society this season felt like a confession, the thing I found most remarkable about my emotional response to this message was how much it stirred up again my desires to be a specialist. To pick something, just one thing, and concentrate all my energies into mastering it. Choral singing, solo singing, pop singing, hootenannies, improving neighborhood walkability, improving neighborhood bikeability, building relationships in my neighborhood, front-end web development, sales, tweeting, music appreciation—the list of possibilities feels endless. However, nothing pulls my affections like singing, perhaps because it’s the one with which I have the longest history, the one for which I feel most guilty not having pursued.
But unless my soul changes, I need to consider the following: I want to do those other things. If I plunge into singing to the depth I feel like I want to, I will not be able to tweet, organize Houserville Social Club, engage civically, work on my house, listen through the classical repertoire, or any of the other activities I so enjoy. I would only be able to stand utter commitment to becoming a singer for so long before I’d bail in favor of my life as an enthusiastic generalist.
Walking is one of my favorite activities. That means this afternoon made my happy: I not only got to walk the sheep pastures with God and sing snippets of Delirious? numbers to Him, but also got to walk from Sunset Park to Pattee Library to Rec Hall and back—about one mile each way—with Sullivan and Éa, who enjoyed seeing the sights and climbing things as much as I enjoyed watching them enjoy them.