Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Grace in action
Yes, the mule is dunking. Grace is owned by local boy Steve Foster who shows off her tricks after giving his testimony about hard living, divine intervention, redemption and the love of a few good mules. Grace has co-starred with Robert Duvall in his movie "Get Low." It's not everyday that you meet livestock that is smarter than your dog, listens better than your kids and has met more important people than you have. Gracie appeared as part of the Browntown Community Center Redbud Festival.
Contemplating the blog's reboot, I went back and reread some old posts. Here is the very first post from 2002:
Greetings on a rainy Easter morning. This site will contain periodic
comments on things that interest me. I am a full-time prosecuting
attorney in a small town in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. I am
also a part-time sheep farmer, living on property that has been in my
wife's family for the past hundred years. The intersection of those two
lives will provide most of the material for these posts. In addition to
the weekly farm report, there will also be comments on books, music,
movies, politics and religion. As to the last, I am a convert to
Orthodox Christianity. Periodically I may try to share some of the
wealth of that tradition. By doing this, I make no claims to special
insight or sanctity. In describing my own spiritual condition, I can do
no better than the little girl in Flannery O'Connor's story "Temple of
the Holy Ghost"; "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could
be a martyr if they killed her quick."
A couple of years after I wrote that, I left prosecution for private practice. The wheel has turned again and I am once more a prosecutor, though this time the small town is in a neighboring county across the mountain from our farm. We still keep our small flock, and I am still Orthodox, though as I get older, it is harder to get in a car and drive on Sunday mornings. These days I don't so much keep the faith as rely on the faith to keep me.
Sunday, March 31, 2002
A couple of years after I wrote that, I left prosecution for private practice. The wheel has turned again and I am once more a prosecutor, though this time the small town is in a neighboring county across the mountain from our farm. We still keep our small flock, and I am still Orthodox, though as I get older, it is harder to get in a car and drive on Sunday mornings. These days I don't so much keep the faith as rely on the faith to keep me.
I'm Back
I started this blog on a rainy Easter morning in 2002. Blogging was the new thing and I was a early adopter. For a while now most of what would have been on the blog ended up on Facebook, occasionally on Twitter, or just shared directly with a friend. (Here, I've got that on my phone, let me pull it up for you . . .) Being by nature a contrarian, I've decided to go back to blogging. So, those three or four of you who still have me in your RSS feeds, yes, I am writing again, no I don't know how long I will keep it up, but yes, my intentions are good. More to follow!Friday, November 04, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday Afternoon
A sunny afternoon after the storm. Some of the flock had wandered off, so I headed off to the usual hiding places and headed them back to the barn.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Easter Lambs
Susan went down to the barn at sunset on Easter to feed and found these two with their mother. Late in the season, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Monday, March 07, 2011
Friday, March 04, 2011
Marginalia, no.183 | The New Psalmanazar
Already he had begun dreaming of a refined Thebaid, a desert hermitage equipped with all modern conveniences, a snugly heated ark on dry land in which he might take refuge from the incessant deluge of human stupidity.
~ J.K. Huysmans, A Rebours
A snugly heated ark might be tempting if I wasn’t sure to bring every species of folly into it with me. Like Noah, I’d spend all my time washing shit off the deck. Anyway, it’s stupidity that I can’t seem to do without. It’s comfortable and familiar. Human intelligence and earnestness are more frightening.
As a trial lawyer I make my living by sweeping up the wreckage of human folly. It does get wearisome at times, but the older I get, the more I realize that my own bag of folly is big enough that I should be a little more forgiving towards the follies of others. Though contra the remarks from the cited blog, a little more intelligence and earnestness now and then would make for a pleasant change.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Religious but Not Spiritual
Spiritual tourism offers the benefits of wisdom derived from those who submit to authority and discipline and tradition without having to do so oneself.
Gregory Wolfe, Image Journal Editorial "Religious but not Spiritual"
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Trees
In tribute to Alan Jacobs website here a two tree photgraphs from my achive. The first is an ancient oak outside of Charleston, South Carolina and the second shows the fall foliage in the treeline next to the house.
G O S P E L O F T H E T R E E S
A new web site by essayist, Auden scholar and Wheaton professor Alan Jacobs. Lots of leafy goodness with apt quotations to go with the photographs.
Fire Update
The fire on the mountain in the pictures below never came any closer to us. High winds drove the flames up over the rigdeline, hopping Skyline drive and burning through Shenandoah National Park down into Rapahhanock County. There is rain today, with sleet and snow predicted for the evening which should put an end to the burning. Our local free paper, The Warren County Report, has online updates here.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Fire on the Mountain, the view from our porch.
High winds, dry conditions and a careless burn equals twenty acres in flames and spreading up into the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive. Friends and neighbors further down the slope are holding their breath, waiting to see if the wind changes.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Some thoughts on e-readers from the Exile Bibliophile
I think I get it. I know, I'm probably the last blogger of the biblioblogosphere to talk about e-readers, but I think I just got it.
Obviously, I love books as things. The physical artifact. Paper, ink, boards, cloth, leather, all of it. I have not really understood the fascination with e-books. Until now. They seem pretty unsatisfactory, by and large, but are improving. I'll also admit I have an ereader app or few on my iphone. I use Stanza for books from Project Gutenberg (30K+ titles for free!) and MegaReader for access to books from Archive.org (Over a million, all free!).
I've used it to read in line at the Post Office, etc., and occasionally for reading in bed when I've not planned well and my TBR pile has shrunk too low to suit whatever reading mood I'm in. I do not use it for my primary reading source, nor do I ever expect it to.
Enter a fantastic book I read this past week: A Book For a Sixpence by David Kaser. Kaser examines the history of subscription libraries in the US. This was part of the Beta Phi Mu chapbook series, which is a must-have for students of the history of the book. This is not exhaustive, nor does he make any claims of it being so. There were many places in Kaser's study that prompted me to ask questions that no one has yet found answers to. There is also a very good bibliography, index and a couple appendices listing known American circulating libraries before 1900. After a very cursory search through my limited records, I only found a few not listed in this 30 year old work.
Reading this book made the light come on. E-readers are the new circulating libraries! Sure, you get to keep the "book" longer, but you don't own it. Your subscription fee is the price of the hardware reader, then you pay for access to the text, not for the book itself.
You never own the text on an e-reader. Except when they're free, then no one seems to really care. But you still don't own it.
In this context, e-readers make more sense. When I try to equate buying an "e-book" (a chimera of a word!) with buying a book, I'm revolted. It doesn't add up. I "buy" an "e-book" and I have no or very limited lending rights, right of first sale is out the window, etc. However, when I consider using an e-reader as a 21st Century subscription library that merely grants access to works, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.
I know most of you have not struggled with this, nor have you sought any kind of justification for buying an e-reader or using one. I think however, I've finally found mine.
kindle, ipad, i-pad, nook, sony, comparison, history, amazon, subscription library, private library, rental library, membership library,
I received a Kindle this Christmas and it has risen to top dog among my many gadgets. In my trade I occasionally find myself stuck waiting for lengthy periods and the kindle, or the e-reader on my smart phone, has the advantage of being discrete and more easily carried in a pocket than even the slimmest paperback. The back lighting on the smart phone also makes reading in bed with minimal spouse disturbance possible. I am still a little uneasy about just what I am buying with an e-book. The perspective in this post helps a bit, though it does give one pause to pay paperback prices or greater to "borrow" a book in digital format.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Morning feeding February 10: A Gallery
We had a dusting of snow last night. Here a few pictures from this morning's trip to the barn.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)