It is not an exercise of privilege to eschew national news. It’s focus.
I’m not sure I enjoy any sociospatial context more than free-spirited, small-group conversation at a table at Webster’s Bookstore Café, surrounded by the sight and smell of used books, the taste of good tea, and the sound of vintage hipster music that isn’t even trying to be cool. (I just wish they stayed open past 7 PM!)
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.
There is a man from Klinger Heights
Who keeps the good of man in sight
Always wants to please the Lord
And as a result, is never bored
His birthday today, we won’t say which
«cough 46!» Oop! That was a glitch.
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 🔦📚
Park Forest is a therapy dog. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
What could I be doing now in theory that I’m not doing because Carla thinks I would be overextending myself in light of family life and my involvement with house church (which is true):
- singing in a small, tight-harmony musical group,
- Big Brothering,
- raising funds for College Avenue path to campus, and
- writing songs (as if).
Now, maybe once I finish the Cross essay, I can start singing again.
I should be more strategic with how I spend my time. Wait. More strategic? Oi vey.
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.
Things I learned today:
- Orientation towards accomplishment and order is going to be hard to mix back into orientation toward people and whim.
- Local democracy is a lot of fun when it involves something you care about.
- Carla is clever and thoughtful.
- Buying presents for nephews and nieces is way fun (at least when you know what to give them).
- I’m eager to be done with the HRIS selection at work.
I don’t usually like what Katherine Watt writes. But this illustration is dynamite good.
Perhaps the joy is lost from listening to and making music largely because it feels desultory: There’s no goal. At least, that’s what it seems like the Spirit may be saying as I possibly discerned on my walk to and from Gary Abdullah’s house to drop off an apology note written by Sullivan for his having tripped over an electrical cord and unplugged Inflatable Christmas Countdown Santa. So, here’s a goal in the absence of a relish for musical theatre, anthem gigs at college basketball games, Puddintown Roots, and the Choral Society: Build your repertoire book.
Today, I am grateful for:
- the joy of hunting suburban deer, which, to be successful (which I was not today), apparently means moving around and using binoculars and stalking, which is fun whether you’re successful or not,
- the joy of joining my dad, Lorraine, Jami, and Jordan in Honey Brook this past weekend, and
- the joy of a job I love.
It’s time to reverse the connotative polarity of “parochial”: It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
What I learned form hunting this past weekend:
- Stalk the whole way to your hunting spot.
- Stalk the whole way from your hunting spot.
- The manure pile is a great place from which to shoot.
- Get more doe tags.
- Reading will be the thing I use to redeem the time.
- During the rut, buck are apparently most active from 11 AM – 2 PM during daylight hours.
Regarding the temptation to read everything there is to know about the state of our government and then make public comment—and anything really: Do nothing out of mimetic desire. Do it only if it is truly self-donation for the benefit of another or others. Not merely virtue signaling and group belonging. Not merely imitation. I’m glad Jason is writing what he is writing and that it’s helping folks. But I don’t need to.
I am worried that I am playing the part of a quietist. But I strongly believe in the importance of building our kingdom-establishing institutions (e.g., blood donations, churches, relationships) in stable ways. I do not need to comment on current events unless love compels me.
Today, I I called myself a “whimsical dabbler” as a way of celebrating and embracing my quick decision to stand on our stoop and cheer the Nittany Valley Half-Marathoners on as they passed by about midday today. (We’re at about mile eleven of their route.) It thereby also a way to encourage myself to make more decisions of what to do out of loving whim, and to accept my identity as a dilettante, and not just in the arts. Indecision about hunting this past week had me down this morning after an unsuccessful hunt yesterday.
I did decide I would become a suburban bowhunter after finding out how much red meat meant to Carla.
Follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes, yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. Let all that you do be done in love, that is, in self-donation for the benefit of others, whom you view as more important than yourself and unsurpassably wonderful.
Smattering of recollections from venison roast dinner this evening with Sauders at their house: I got to share my Alan Jacobs story. They were delighted at God’s activity. They remarked that we’re funny—like, make-you-laugh funny—something they don’t have enough of among their friends at University Mennonite Church. I surmised that social justice warriors have a hard time smiling. Ruth insisted that people ought to grow more idiosyncratic as they age, as long it’s not grumpily idiosyncratic. As such, in reply to Carla’s question about whether the Sauders think I’m weird, her answer was a very positive affirmative. I picked up Ta-Nehisi Coates’ letter to his son as my next book. The kids made Ed the Rabbit some things to chew on. It was a delightful evening.
“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.
I’m grateful for my new friends Greg Bishop and Andrew Marzka, two fellow elementary-school dad with whom I spent the better part of the basketball-and-pizza evening.
I’m also grateful Carla has decided she will return to cutting my hair. She wants to thank me for working hard at work.
I’m grateful for a day at home with no agenda or calendar items whatsoever. Just what we needed after a week dealing with Janet’s death. I’m sure the record of days will encapsulate it.
I will highlight one part of it, though: I’m grateful that the topography of State College includes the snow-covered hill at Penn Hills Park, which we Stilsons tobogganed down for two hours this sunny afternoon. Oh, and Carla and I had an attention-grabbing wrestling match on the slope, in which she attempted to pin me but could barely get me on the ground. I love a playful, feisty wife.
I’m grateful for Josh, who helped me shovel Janet’s driveway yesterday afternoon in preparation for the arrival of some relatives.