How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm After they've seen Paree' How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway Jazzin around and paintin' the town -Joe Young and Sam F. Fields Starting to feel a little melancholy after we wrapped up my last class in Tax Planning for Real Estate Transactions. A couple of us exchanged contact information. Thirty-four days and we'll be loading up the Caddy and driving through the Holland Tunnel. Walking anywhere in Manhattan involves an elaborate gam

"The Triune God is the Revealer, the event of Revelation, and the effect of Revelation." — Karl Barth I am, again, hopelessly behind on schoolwork and work work this morning, so brevity is mandatory. Rather than babbling, I'll post a link below to a fairly extraordinary dialogue in the New York Times between Peter Wehner and David Bentley Hart, a theologian and philosopher who's spent a half century wrestling with the meaning of Christianity and the contradictions inherent i

I'm going where the sun keeps shining Through the pouring rain Going where the weather suits my clothes Banking off of the northeast winds Sailing on a summer breeze And skipping over the ocean like a stone -Fred Neil Late, busy, and not able to write a long one today. The dams I built in January to hold back the crush of my day job while I'm in NYC are starting to crumble a little, just in time for finals. Last Friday P and I decided to watch Midnight Cowboy , mostly to catc

So, yesterday Peg and I dragged our old selves up Second Avenue to church. We attended services on Easter Sunday up in Canandaigua, but before that it'd been awhile. Once one gets in the habit of not going to church, of reading the paper and having that second cup of coffee on Sunday mornings when one would otherwise be getting ready for services, it takes an act of will to make the journey, and I'm always a little hesitant about walking through the door and having all those

[this was actually written 3.20.26, but apparently never posted because of the wonky internet in Monteagle] Sort of a placeholder here. We're in Monteagle, Tennessee, seven hours north of Bay County in one of our most special places on earth. Late yesterday afternoon we walked the Domain of the University of the South, which was an anthill of kids and activity. It's not spring break here yet. Afterward we stopped for a drink at the fancy new Sewanee Inn, then to supper at one

"Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him." - Mark Twain Watching morning joggers bounce past on a lovely 37 degree morning. I'd thought about writing on the aftermath of Trump's surrender in the Iran War, particularly with regard to the knucklehead core of true believers who light up social media to parrot their Cheeto Messiah's talkin

"Keep an open mind and always look for the good in people. You may be surprised at what you find." -Erich "Bubi" Hartmann Walking home last night from class, past groups of mostly NYU undergrads shuffling to the social gathering of the evening on a brisk night, it occurred to me how strange their lives are to me, and how very strange my life in my 20s would have been to them. I found myself thinking of "straight lines and little hooks", of "never turning on a merged plot", of

"It's the end of the world as we know it It's the end of the world as we know it It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine" -R.E.M., 1987 So early this morning Dear Leader promised "A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight". We sit here less than eleven hours from his bogus deadline. Will this be a TACO moment, yet again? If he directs the Air Force to murder most of the 93 million people in Iran with a nuke strike, will anyone in uniform refuse to follow that blat

"At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning Back by myself in the Lower East Side after spending the Easter weekend with P at the Cliff in Canandaigua. Not sure what happened, but the world sort of caught up with me around the middle of yesterday afternoon as I was driving through mist in eastern Pennsylvania, and by bedtime I was reliving videos of my war a

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah." 36 And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will co

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity  to restore your fortunes, but have seen oracles for you  that are false and misleading. All who pass along the way  clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at daughter Jerusalem; ‘Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’ All your enemies open their mouths against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: ‘We have

"I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring... I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later... I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute." -E.B. White Last night after class it was still above

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most" -Mark Twain (maybe) Coming off another of those evenings--up from 1:30 to 3:30, totally unable to quiet the mind enough to return to sleep until I just sort of slid back into oblivion. Now watching the steady traffic through the doors of Dunkin, folks in search of their latte and gooey pastry. So many great little family diners and bakeries here--why do they flock to this place? Yesterday was sort of a bust, which leads t

This'll be a brief one, after discovering that I left the power cord for this computer back in Corning. A very, very bad development, to put it mildly. This place is very slow to come to life on Monday mornings. A stream of folks into Dunkin across the street, but generally low energy. I'd thought about writing on the topic of how the November elections matter less now, given that the war won't be over by then and it's not like sweeping MAGA out of control of Congress will pu

"At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning Years ago, in the very early days of Comedy Central, I remember a program named Short Attention Span Theater. The setup was that they presented a series of short clips of stand-up comics talking about one topic or another, packed into a mere thirty minutes. I mean, how could anyone get their arms around something i

"These are the times that try men's souls." -Thomas Paine During this morning's predawn doom scroll, I came across a long Facebook post from Dan Carlin. Dan's one of my favorite people I've never met. We're about the same age, both from Southern California, both history nerds. His podcast Hard Core History is a staple for P and me on long car trips. We're in the eleventh hour of his series on the life of Alexander the Great, haltingly making our way through the Battle of Gran

What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came

"I'm goin' down to the Greyhound Station, gonna get a ticket to ride Gonna find that lady with two or three kids and sit down by her side Ride 'til the sun comes up and down around me 'bout two or three times Smokin' cigarettes in the last seat Tryin' to hide my sorrow from the people I meet and get along with it all Go down where the people say "y'all" Feed the pigeons some clay, turn the night into day Start talkin' again when I know what to say" -Blaze Foley, Clay Pigeons

I've been everywhere, man I've been everywhere, man Crossed the deserts bare, man I've breathed the mountain air, man Of travel I've a-had my share, man I've been everywhere -Johnny Cash Back in NYC after a spring break that was an utter failure in terms of meeting any of my goals for this trip. I'd thought I would take advantage of a week with no classes to bill a little extra time, meet in person with folks in Florida who required hand-holding, catch up on my one online cla

O, Father dear, I often hear you speak of Erin's Isle, Her lofty scenes her valleys green, her mountains rude and wild You said it is a lovely place wherein a prince might dwell, Why have you then forsaken her, the reason to me tell? My son, I loved our native land with energy and pride Until a blight fell on my crops my and sheep and cattle died, The rents and taxes were too high, I could not them redeem, And that's the cruel reason why I left Old Skibbereen. It's well I do