I’ve never seen evidence of good men in national politics. The best are only good in relation to the swine roaming DC hallways. Truly good men are only ever known personally and are invisible to every form of worldly power.
An account of my Saturday
I decided late in the week to go to Tell City because the Pour Haus pub there had been on my mind lately. Not that it’s particularly noteworthy—it’s just how this particular day-trip itch popped up for me. So with a few episodes of The Emerald loaded up, I headed south. After brief visits at family graves, I stopped first at Saint Joseph’s Holy Family near Bristow. It’s a wonderful folk shrine that I’ll definitely be visiting again when I can walk it more slowly.
Rachel is playing in an old time music jam in Paoli tonight. Having no musical talent, I’m one of four or five spectators. Two upright basses, two mandolins, a banjo, a fiddle, a dulcimer, several guitars, and fifteen voices. If you aren’t jealous, you should be.
Finished reading Tools For Engagement: Reclaiming Craft in an Age of Technology by Joshua Klein and Mike Updegraff. This book is full of Joshua and Mike’s characteristic blend of woodworking history, craft philosophy, technological criticism, and practical skills. I appreciate the way they have never let theory drift far from practice. Embodied intellect.
A memory of the old timey internet: in the early 2000s I used to listen to a Christian rock internet radio station. No idea what it was called. It was broadcast live, with actual DJs. It was the station that first introduced me to Evanescence through their breakout song “Bring Me to Life.” Also discovered several other bands through that station: The Benjamin Gate, Jeremy Camp, Kutless, 12 Stones.
Evanescence was particularly big for Rachel and me. We loved that combination of ethereal vocals and heavy guitars. And the lyrics? Well, I’ve always held a special place in my heart for melodramatic goths.
Jaroslav Pelikan, as quoted in Tools for Engagement:
Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.
Study finds that Coloradans will be traveling less this summer. Coloradans traveling elsewhere is proof that humans just can’t be happy.
Women get a lot of crap about being basic in the fall, with the pumpkin spice lattes and sweaters and such. But, listen, I have a long beard and use beard oil and love brewpubs with craft beer and dabble in woodworking. It doesn’t get much more basic than that. 😂
Beautiful coneflowers
It matters what thoughts we think with
Klein and Updegraff, Tools for Engagement: It’s necessary, absolutely necessary, for us to first recognize that it’s good to be human—inefficiencies, blunders, and all. We are not machines, nor should we desire to be. This means taking a strong stand against what author Wendell Berry describes as “our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves.