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!
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
