The Sad Dads of the National For two decades, the band has written music about the kind of sadness that feels quotidian and incremental—the slow accumulation of ordinary losses. This caught my eye while scrolling emails Friday afternoon into evening, and I stopped, clicked on, and read Petrusich's essay that'll be in next week's print edition of The New Yorker. Her opening paragraph triggered my own deepest ruefulness about life; and though essays in The Atlantic and in The New Yorker tend to go long, it was interesting and she held my attention right through to the end. Here's the picture she used, and her opening paragraph.  Last fall, the National débuted a new piece of merchandise: a black zippered sweatshirt featuring the words “ sad dads ” in block letters. The band — which formed in 1999, in Brooklyn — was lampooning its reputation as a font of midlife ennui, the sort of rudderless melancholy that takes hold when a person realizes that the dusty hallmarks of Amer...

  Yesterday, a doozy. Lightning, extreme heavy weather sweeping through, thunderstorms with wind, tornado warnings. At one point Linda heard something loud outside, and it was a small, driving heavy rainstorm coming across the Bay direct at 7H from The Pass at about 35 or 40 mph. I slammed and locked the bedroom door, Linda rushed and locked the living room door just as it hit. A bit alarming because at that instant we were watching waterspouts and tornadoes with our super weather team on Channel 13, and we didn't know but maybe this little storm had a waterspout inside. But no, it was okay. Probably a good test for the recent contract work to take care of our leak from above us. During one round of this new extreme weather some months ago, we got pictures of a waterspout moving along out in the Gulf.  Kristen on her way to Atlanta right now, for a Taylor Swift concert this evening. Staying with friends and returning Sunday, she had meant to drive up yesterday but extreme weat...

Nice out - - what? 65° clear, 92% humidity. Dew point of 62° right now, is that close enough to the temperature to cause sudden fog? IDK. Hint of light changing overnight into Wednesday morning, a promising day. Sometimes this midweek, even though no sermon to contemplate, I may look at our lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday. It'll be the Fourth Sunday of Easter, traditionally Good Shepherd Sunday. So -> John 10:1-10 Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this...

  It's 33° in Ann Arbor, Michigan at this early morning moment. Thirty-three, and my weather report has a snowflake. Jeepers!  Memories slip and can be mistaken. Sometimes a memory gets mixed with another memory and we are certain about something that's not true at all. I'll not search online for weather histories to verify my memory, but our first snow in Ann Arbor that season was mid-October 1962 and our last snow was mid-May 1963. The Michigan summer was idyllic, but winter began the middle of autumn and ended late spring.  My memory of Ann Arbor includes that automobiles more than three or four years old were rusted to ruin, and that long winter lines of cars were in queue down the street and around the block to drive through a carwash and rinse the salt from under the car. Still, my memory is that I loved absolutely everything about being there, including an aroma of crispy apples that fall. Fondly I remember some of my courses and professors, and that I did well eno...

  Monday after Sunday that called me to sleep from seven p.m. to five a.m. How long, Lord? "The Persistence of Memory" is a 1931 painting by Salvador Dali that a close friend used recently to introduce his blogpost for the day. I'd not seen or thought of it in long years, but it all came back. Also called "Melting Clocks" and other nicknames, it's a perfect image of Time for me at this age, where did it go, how the Hell did I get to be this age in the mirror mornings, when I'm actually 17 inside of me and the best of life and Time are happening and never go away. What's happened, is happening, is that Time melted away and left all the memories.  Wishing you long years, and that you also come to a stage in life when melting clocks make perfect sense to you.  Time, Art, and Poetry, all surreal until you get there, eh?! What am I doing? I'm sitting here in my chair, at my little foldable table that passes for a desk in the living room of 7H, looking...

What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening. I want you to grasp the Easter immediacy of what’s going on in Luke's gospel. Please sit down and let's talk. +++++++++ You heard the story! Visualize this. Place yourself as the disciples inside the gospel story. That’s us! Now on our way back home to Emmaus, we have been up to Jerusalem for Passover. Already knowing Jesus, we went early because Jesus was going to be there, and we wanted to see and hear him again. And we did! He spoke around the city, and in the Temple several Times. But - - day before yesterday, on Friday, everything fell to pieces, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it's now the third day after that horrible Friday of Jesus’ death just day before yesterday. Still Sunday, in fact, it is Sunday afternoon of what generations to come will call Easter Day. I want you to "get it" that all this has just happened and is still happening. You are there as part of it. Sunday afternoon after the horror of Good Friday: ...

  Early Saturday morning before the Third Sunday of Easter. Huge fun: a fine first cup of this month's exciting club coffee, hot & black, perfect, it makes life different: what'll I do when the subscription runs out? Maybe if I close my eyes it won't run out.  Weather? drizzle 69°F 96% humidity, wind West 4 mph, the dew point is 68°, which our weather star on television has explained to us is, as it closes with the air temperature, what brings on fog. I love days like this, rainy mornings of life. At this age, one doesn't know how many more one will enjoy, or indeed how much more Time one has - - could be ten seconds, three minutes, two months, or a dozen years, eh? One doesn't know. My friends, life is short and Every Day Is A Beautiful Day. Couple of things I thought to ramble about this morning. Three actually. Yesterday we had lobster tails for dinner, raw, I used an online recipe to cook them, and they were beautiful, scrumptiously sweet and tender. Lobster...

People like to say "I'm not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person." Fine, makes no difference to me, though my perception is that with me it's the other way around: I'm not very spiritual but I am more or less religious. And the farther science enables me to look out into the Universe, either the more religious or the less religious I get, I'm not sure.  Logos, just one Word speaking or singing all this into being, and God SAID, "yeh-HI" and it was so and is so? IDK. Theologically it ties too integral to the Big Bang for me to deny it. Logos, the prime motivator that is none other than divine will at work bringing things into being, if I see it that way? IDK. So, anyway, sometimes early I browse, maybe google and browse, and this morning, remembering that some years ago at his death, someone's young son who was at the end of a terminal illness, courageously, very bravely and faithfully said to his family, "It's Time for me to g...