Happy Hobbit Day! Unfortunately I won’t have as much time for celebrating today but I will certainly have this music playing in the background.

It’s a Soundgarden Superunknown kind of morning.

Following on from the “husbands in cars” memory: Rachel made a good point that our services were very demanding. If the “unsaved” husband actually went inside the building he could very easily have been targeted by the preacher. Maybe even named and called out. (It happened many times.) Ours was also a very emotional religion: men of that generation were commonly uncomfortable with such outward emotion, even if they inwardly believed.

We had a point midway in the service (I don’t know how commonly this was done in other churches) where the pastor, or someone called up by the pastor, would open the floor for prayer requests. They could be spoken out by anyone in the congregation and then we would kneel (by which I mean knees on the floor, elbows on the pews—not any of those fancy kneelers the “formal” churches had) and pray for a few minutes. Many of those women would—every service, and for years on end—request prayer for their “lost husbands” or, even more commonly, “lost children.”

A phenomenon I associate with country churches in my childhood: an irreligious husband waiting in the car while the devout wife is in church—either because she didn’t drive (this was fairly common in rural areas) or because the husband didn’t want her driving in the dark. Anyone else remember this?

Aesop Rock has announced a new album and it looks like he’ll be doing some tech critique. The first release “Mindful Solutionism” indicates that we’re looking at another great album.

Landmines, Agent Orange, leaded gas, cigarettes
Cameras in your favorite corners, plastic in the wilderness
We can not be trusted with the stuff that we come up with
The machinery could eat us, we just really love our buttons

Folks, Rachel found the bullfrog that lives in our pond eating a bird as big as the frog itself. I’ll spare you the picture. I had no idea they’d eat anything that big. We have now named her Nessie.

Last night Rachel and I watched “The Unbinding”, the new documentary from the Newkirks. If you’re interested in haunted objects, I highly recommend this one. Available on Prime.

I saw that today’s photo challenge word was “cycle” just as I settled in here at Taste of Belgium in Cincinnati for a Kwaremont, a beer designed for pro cycling fans. Named after one of cycling’s most famous hills, it has the same ABV as the hill’s average gradient.

The Mavericks 1994 album “What a Crying Shame” mostly reminds me of Dwight Yoakam, which is probably why I love it so much. Dwight Yoakam will always be my favorite country singer. But the Mavericks are more than that–proof of which can be heard in their wonderful 2020 album “En Español”. 🎵