All my good jeans are inherited.
— Éa
The pitch clock has worked: Baseball has become enjoyable to watch! ⚾️
🎧 🎵 Ram (1971) by Paul and Linda McCartney.
An oddball, trifling McCartney album I enjoy front to back. (One of only two.) Proof that music need not be deep to be good. The most Beatlesy of all their solo albums, full of fun melodies, interesting chord progressions, charmingly goofy singing, and production that’s generous without ever falling into schmaltz. It’s fun to picture Paul enjoying cutting records with his wife! (And I’ll listen to Linda over Yoko any day.) The album is not the headwaters of indie pop, as has been claimed; that’s the Beach Boys’ two 1967 albums. But it is a very good early exemplar. The only criticism I’ll brook is that it may come across at times a tinch too self-consciously mannered.
As I age, I find I’m less of a Lennon guy and more of a McCartney guy. Is that progress? Is that common?
🎨 I’m dithering writing to myself about Paul McCartney while wife is making this:
“Only rich people can live like Wendell Berry,” said my friend Josh last night, helping me articulate a misgiving I have about what The Farmer advocates. I don’t think it’s entirely true, but I do think it’s an examining thought worth bringing when you read Berry. 📖
🎧 🎵 I’m glad I kept my CD copy of Superchic[k]’s Karaoke Superstars. Cute, catchy, honest, lightly theistic punk-pop whose lead vocalist was clearly in her early twenties when she wrote it but was nevertheless equipped with the kind of wisdom that twenty-somethings need.
In conversation with a friend last night, we developed a fourfold list of precepts that, if held together (in partial tension, for sure), will lead to a happy life:
- Give thanks in all circumstances.
- Do what you’re doing. Don’t worry about the rest.
- Follow the impulses of your eyes and the desires of your heart, yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things.
- It’s a fact that you will not accomplish and experience all the things you want to before you die.
The ideal birthday communication is neither the tired greeting card not the awkward phone call. The first is unremarkable; the second requires too much of the recipient. Instead, it’s a heartfelt voice message sent via text. 🎉
Circumvent Google’s default search results page—including its new, unwelcome AI results—and return to a simple list of blue links. 💻
Saying “thank you for your patience” before the speaker knows his listener will give it is presumptuous. Better to say “I’m sorry.”
I stand with carbohydrates. 🍞
🎧 🎵 I happened across a CD copy of local bluegrass stalwarts Tussey Mountain Moonshiners’ 2016 album SHINE last year at the AAUW used book sale. It cost me a dollar. It’s (more than) good enough to make me feel as if I have stolen from them.
Hypothetical future album title: Self-Preservation for the Sake of Others
What is microblogging for?
Is style a virtue? If so, how?
Scott: Hey, no pointing. It makes me nervous.
Sullivan: I wasn’t pointing. I was air-rubbing your teeth.
Ever take a grief nap? I sure have.
Carla: There’s a book I wanna read.
Éa: Me, too. But I finished it.
Do not heed the word of the prophets who prophesy to you. They deal emptiness to you. Their own heart’s vision they speak, not from the mouth of the Lord. They repeatedly say to those who despise the word of the Lord, “It will go well with you,” and to each who goes in the stubbornness of his heart, “Evil will not come upon you” (Jeremiah 23:16-17).
This reminds me of why I’m suspicious of so much of what passes for prophecy these days.
I am acquisitive. I am sorry, Lord.
Take your time, Scott. Just the next right thing.
It’s making more sense to me today, which is convenient as Thanksgiving approaches: We give thanks for spiritual gifts and the fruit of the Spirit, as well as miracles, yes, when we have identified them. Beyond that, are thanksgiving is general, as sure, we cannot thank God directly for putting food on our table, it being seed suppliers, farmers, distributors, and markets, along with our own trade with our employers of our labor for money, that have put the food on our table. But all of that is part of a system, a system we call Creation, in which such things are possible and indeed, such things bring pleasure. Since we are addressing the Creator of this Creation, it is right and good to give thanks! It is the kind of thanksgiving that results in the delight of the Giver because He is able to observe the joy and peace that His creation has engendered in other creatures.
Finally!
I woke up ready to sleep ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Don’t complain. There is no such thing as suffering. Only refusal to accept things the way they are. By the way, Buddhists have defeated the problem of evil. I just need to find a way to cogently combine it with Christianity.
Reading Jeremiah 7 helps me make sense of Jesus’ saying that He speaks in parables expressly to obfuscate the truth for some of His hearers. If my children have been acting up for so long that I’m about to punish them, I will stop giving them instructions meant for their nourishment for the time leading up to their punishment lest they get the idea that they can just always push me to the edge but I’ll always relent immediately upon their tidying up their act. If I never delivered a punishment, we have impunity, and impunity is bad.