Quite a story: “How Chinese spies used lies, love and betrayal to target the Federal Reserve”
The squat pen rests, snug as a gun
Charles Taylor, via the estimable Donny: We are deeply moved, but also puzzled and shaken. We struggle to articulate what we’ve been through. If we succeed in formulating it, however partially, we feel a release, as though the power of the experience was increased by having been focussed, articulated, and hence let fully be. This is a needed articulation of an experience I’ve struggled to understand. Occasionally when writing something, especially when it’s deeply important to me, I have felt something like that emotional release.
“we are not hedonists, and were not created merely for our own happiness or pleasure”
The grace of a clear mind
Caring for my mom makes me increasingly grateful for a clear mind. Here on the cusp of fifty years old, I am in some senses at the height of my powers. What I have lost in physical ability has been compensated for by patience. What I have lost in mental agility has been compensated for by judgment. Watching her decline, I understand that my mental clarity is today’s grace: it is not mine by right, and will not last forever.
The local HVAC company we use puts out a newsletter with company news (like employee of the month) and a community calendar. It’s hokey and awesome. And, of course, the September issue has a persimmon pudding recipe.
Joscelyn Godwin, The Mystery of the Seven Vowels:
Yet I will add, in all seriousness, that no animal would have served better as a hidden symbol of Iaô than the patient and unmusical ass, which cries as best it can the name of the Unknown God.
I was not expecting to find a joke–much less a funny one–in this book.
Faithful love
From Wendell Berry’s May 2022 Sabbath poem: But the old man knows, contrarily, that this world was made by love. He knows it because that love came to him one time in the person of a girl and it abides in the girl’s great-grandmotherhood. He knows the world was made by love because of his experience of faithful love. As below, so above–an inversion of the Hermetic saying.
I made persimmon cookies today using this recipe. Two notes:
- Under no circumstances should you put raisins in these cookies. I like raisins but that is just silliness.
- Don’t put walnuts in the cookies. Put a single walnut on top.
Found a covid-era bottle of sanitizer. Read the right side of the label.
That feeling when you have some time off work that moves at just the right pace. This morning I woke up and thought, “It’s still only Saturday morning!”