I Am Not Hamlet

Dana Gioia, poet, former NEA Chairman, and USC Professor on spending time on his property in Sonoma County: I have twenty hilly acres of oaks, redwoods, and madrones, and there is always work to do.  I'm trying to restore the landscape to its natural state and protect the native species.  No one really cares about this goal but me.  My neighbors think I should tear out the trees and plant grapes.  But I prefer the way God landscaped it. I couldn't agree more. (From  Image #73)

Though it's a bit late now, watch this and help out starting next April.

I don't like beer.  I've tried over the course of the last 20 years to like it, but have failed every time.  My most recent try was last September with a beer after a 22 mile bike ride.  Yuck!  That liquid is so bitter, it reminds me of sawdust (not that I ingest that, either).  Occasionally, some interesting brew will have an intriguing smell, but much like the deception of coffee, the smell masks the lurking taste of ewwwwwwwwwww.      This lack of hopsphilia comes at a price.  Many, many (if not most) adult social events revolve around beer.  Sure, sometimes hard liquor or wine (or some other kind of alcohol) is available, but not always.  And certainly not at beer's price.  So, I stand around with my glass of wine or water looking inside at all the beer drinkers and their fun.      Much like my antipathy for professional sports, I remain at the edges of American culture.  Not many people st...

I'm finding out how different a world it is for my children versus my childhood in the summer.  Now I've got the summers off because I teach (or try to anyway) and am able to spend quite a bit of time with my children, yet I want them to realize that I'm not going to incessantly entertain them.  They need to find things to do on their own.  The sizable difference, between myself and them, is that many of their friends don't have the summer "off."  These children are in daycare, at a grandparents, somewhere other than home.  There aren't many children around for mine to play with. Growing up in the '70s, I seem to remember most of my classmates available for playing nearly all the time.  Now, so many families have to send both parents to work that the children aren't home to play in the summer.  That's what I'd call a "cruel, cruel summer."

Those of us who struggle with habitual sins--and we know who we are--are very likely to break our hearts over the business of turning away from those chronic mark missings [from the Greek word for sin: amartia --SFM].  Our problems with recurring sin, and the more general human problem of being enslaved by sin, is never simply solved by our rejecting that sin, no matter how many times we try, no matter how strenuously we struggle to reject it. That is because merely rejecting sin--that is, focusing on not sinning--is finally just another species of infernal no . "Just say no" is an insufficient principle. The strongest man or woman in the world is not nearly strong enough to triumph over his or her sin simply by saying no to it.  What we need is the strength-giving grace occasioned by our saying yes to something else , by our saying yes , and yes , and yes --ceaselessly--to Someone else. It is not our finally turning away from sin that frees us from sin's ...

Green frogs calling; birds, birds, birds: goldfinches, sandhill cranes, robins, song sparrows, a scarlet tanager(?); lots of rabbits, and I think I scared a snapping turtle attempting to lay eggs.  She scurried off a sand incline back into a small pond.  There were several shallow holes where she had been.

...for a so-so book. http://erb.kingdomnow.org/15-days-of-praying-with-st-john-of-the-cross-brief-review/ Thanks again to the Englewood Review of Books.