Steps

Adore and obey, don’t fulminate and flee
Be a man not a guy
A producer not a consumer
Solution not problem
(or be quiet)
(which doesn’t mean don’t talk ever)
Measured not random
Good not bad
Lean not fat
Walking not sitting
Writing not watching
Reading not watching
Watching not sleeping
Pay attention!
People not things
Paper not screens
Trees not screens
Clean not dirty
Neat not cluttered
(mostly)
Typing not keyboard
Pen not typing
Letter not email
Call not letter
Think, think, think
Feel, feel, feel, feel
Don’t confuse them!
Movies over TV
(except for Katy’s)
Active not passive
Love God and others, especially M

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Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

The Walmart Fairy

Want to know when you can be sure the economy is in the turlet? It’s when even Walmart’s not hiring. According to this item, the company has hired essentially nobody for the last six years. Nobody says it’s since the bankers ripped us off again and the government let them, and all the oceans stopped

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No Words

Silence is faith. Before God Before others When I was quiet with G___ and B___ and J___ — that was faith. When I am silent it is that. Silence before M___ or D___ on C___. Contentment in solitude Acceptance of opposition Okayness in life going ‘other’ No wife or woman Prayer. These are faith. + Faith not:

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Whispers and Words

My dad died in my sleep. 2:35 AM in an upstate New York hospice; 11:35 PM in a Southern California house. A text saying to call and two voice mails I still haven’t listened to and speaking was as a sunrise. New but not unexpected. * Who’s the dust in this scenario? Remember, O Man, that thou art but

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All Hat No Cattle

The men I respected most when I wrote about the golf business — and being the golf business they were mostly men — were course superintendents. I loved talking with them, because they more than nearly anyone else wanted to be there simply for the grass and the golfers, and in that order. And this

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Murder, Inc.

In Season One’s “Ransom for a Dead Man” Columbo tells a story about his cousin Ralph. He’s flying in Leslie Williams’ plane and she’s been talking about her husband, whom she’s murdered. By the story he tells after they’ve landed, he enters the murderer’s mind — with a significant stopping point: “I have this cousin, Ralph,

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Columbo: Why We Watch

This is part one of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, we still watch Columbo. Part two is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * For my wedding, I asked for and received the Columbo DVD collection. Complete to that point, it ended

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All Things Considered

This could go a couple different ways. An image likes could be Veteran’s Day, it’s not, or Memorial Day which, though closer, it’s not. Could be about a song (actually a poem) I found only a few months ago or an automatically somber meditation on mortality that’s begun before you’ve even begun to read …

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The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

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