Category: Miscellany

Vocations – true and fancied

“Every time I move to a new place, I’m asked by the locals, “How do you like living here?” I’m never quite sure how to answer that question, and for the longest time I didn’t know why. And then one day it dawned on me, I couldn’t answer the question because I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between one place and the next.” Continue reading “Vocations – true and fancied” →

Decreased blogging?

I’ve thought a few earlier times that I would cut back on blogging for a while for one reason or another. This time, I think I mean it.

Don’t be surprised if I’m rather taciturn for seven weeks or so. Not to be too mysterious about it: I have a perrennial vacation that I greatly value (You don’t want to go there. Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.), a parent in a nursing home (temporarily, we believe), some big projects to advance the law firm in which I’m a partner, and, finally, an important professional examination (my first big, meaningful test since the bar exam). Exercise outdoors in summer is good, too.

Ah, summer! Time to kick back and relax it up a notch!

I may post some interesting links here without real comment — kind of like linking off Facebook — or I may actually move that sort of thing to Facebook, pure and simple. I should be back around labor day.

A tacky icon meets its end

As Jason Peters puts it at Front Porch Republic, Zeus has been avenged for offenses against statuary.

“I guess it takes a divine sense of irony to destroy a fiberglass and foam statue outside a place called Solid Rock Church,” said Monroe assistant fire chief Connie Flagration. “You want irony in a god, but this might be going a bit too far.”

Details here and here.

I don’t understand why I don’t hear weeping in heaven. Or maybe I do.

Amo, Amas, I love a lass …

I could call it “Haikuly yours III,” but I’ll save that because (a) this one’s public domain now and (b) I know this poem and can sing it rousingly:

Amo, Amas

by John O’Keefe

Amo, Amas, I love a lass
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip’s grace is her nominative case,
And she’s of the feminine gender.

Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.

Can I decline a Nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis.
Her oculus bright, her manus white,
And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is.

Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.

Oh, how bella my puella,
I’ll kiss secula seculorum.
If I’ve luck, sir, she’s my uxor,
O dies benedictorum.

Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.

(“Amo, Amas” by John O’Keefe. Public domain.)

For what it’s worth, I can still sing the Portugese national anthem from memory, 42 years after the Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club learned it for our European tour. Rote memorization is odd.

Globalization + the Pill = Culture Wars

A very interesting post at FPR clued me in to a Jonathan Rauch article in National Journal, which in turn discusses a new book that essentially publishes a Grand Unification Theory of the origins of “Red” and “Blue” America.

I hesitate to summarize. Read either the Front Porch Republic piece or Rauch’s for a summary instead.

What this leaves me with is a couple of intuitions, none of which I’m remotely prepared to defend to the death:

  1. I have taken some solace that “Red America” is growing demographically while “Blue America” is at NPG. This new theory makes me think that teeming Red America will continue to work for Blue America and will continue to be relatively ineffectual in carrying out any red agenda.
  2. Any red agenda is already in trouble. Red America, relatively speaking, tramples on the values they profess and which, in their pulpits, they literally preach. Why? They’re spitting into a very, very strong headwind of sexuality and lower wages, and their early marriages, plus the newish necessity of both parents working, make musical beds a far more popular game in Red American than in Blue.
  3. What happens when the Trillion Dollar Ponzi Scheme collapses? Red America knows more about the practical arts like gardening, homebuilding, etc. than Blue America knows. Will Blue America be picking Red America’s asparagus in a few Springs?


Drinking from a firehose

I experienced yesterday three sessions of what sometimes is now referred to as “drinking from a firehose.”

  1. The first was a meeting with somebody who had a new approach to marketing my law firm’s services. I thought I had a general understanding going into the meeting, but his company has really taken a vaguely familiar idea to a much higher level than I had imagined. It is exciting, but challenging, since it does not simply involve paying his company some money and then watching magic happen.
  2. I met with a construction manager who has prepared a sophisticated estimate of what it will cost to build the church design that I have shared earlier on this blog. Suffice to say that it is not within our tentative budget. It is exciting, but challenging, since it does not simply involve paying his company some money and then watching magic happen. I will now become involved in a new round of meetings to see if the higher dollar figure is achievable and to try to trim costs if it is not ( or simply on general principle insofar as the construction manager has identified “fat” in the design).
  3. I had my first “food class” with, and got my diet plan from, a weight loss Center I have signed up with to lose 72 pounds over the next 24 weeks. It is exciting, but challenging, since it does not simply involve paying this company some money and then watching magic happen. I’m going to have to become much more intentional about my eating and nutrition for the next 24 weeks. Meals “on the run” are not going to work well; if I am going to eat on the run, is going to be something that I had been meticulously planned in advance.

The point of all this is that I’m going to be striving to reduce the frequency with which I blog. I haven’t been at this for very long, and it really is great fun, but proper priorities say that it’s less important than some other things. ( If you read my introduction, you’ll see that I never anticipated blogging as often as I have been anyway.) My early evenings are going to need to be for exercise, not catching up on e-mail and the day’s blogs, so those tasks are going to get pushed off into the later evening, leaving less time to write my own content or even to forward good stuff.

I don’t expect to shut this down or to stop blogging entirely (I have known people who stopped blogging for Lent, for instance). And I hope to be back strong in a while.