Randy Fox interviews David Plowden at his American Elegy site.
Bus Stop, Plainview, Texas, by Charles Henry. Discovered at American Elegy.
There’s nothing more beautiful than a shovel. →
Alan Jacobs on Steve Jobs' oft-quoted Stanford commencement address →
Alan Jacobs’ comments are good. I would add this: for all the talk of the world-changing (or, even, universe-denting) stuff Jobs did with Apple, what fundamentally matters is how the man was to the people closest to him. Was he available to his children? Did he pour himself out for his wife as he did for his company? Did he have love? Or was he sounding brass and clanging cymbal? Of course, being apart from the Son of the God who is love—as Jobs was—no one can have love. And by all accounts, he was hard to be around. Many stories about Jobs indicate that he was personally irascible, hot-tempered, and an awful person to be around—but that’s all okay, they hasten to add, because he was an inspiring visionary.
From all accounts, he was sounding brass and clanging cymbal, a man in tune with the future (whatever that means), but out-of-tune with the people who had to live with him.
“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history. If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection? No, Christians must not be too easily satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty — and truth — is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of hell…. A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental: they necessarily are reflected in his theology.”
Ratzinger consistently astonishes me.
Field burning.
Birds, thinking southward.
The death of Andrew.
One that made it, and one that didn’t.
Abortions in New York City →
In my old neighborhood (the predominantly very poor 10301), for every 536 babies born, a relatively conservative—for NYC—346 were killed in the womb. In the neighborhood of my birth (10456), it’s a neck-and-neck 1672 live to 1575 slaughtered. In 10018, for every child born, two were killed before they breathed air. In the poorest areas of the City, well over half of all pregnancies result in in-utero infanticide.
Stark and utterly ghastly.
Found via First Things.
Jones family shop, Genesee, Idaho.
Old Ford, Jones family shop, Genesee, Idaho.
The Origin of Sadman →
Ridiculously good. By one Seth Madej.
Horses, approaching storm.
Turnaround.
The Drive-by Truckers: Carl Perkins' Cadillac
But damn, Mike Cooley can write some lyrics. This one’s on the towering The Dirty South.
Life ain’t nothing but a blending up of all the ups and downs
Dammit Elvis, don’t you know
You made your Mama so proud
Before you ever made that record, before there ever was a Sun
Before you ever lost that Cadillac that Carl Perkins won
Mr. Phillips found old Johnny Cash and he was high
High before he ever took those pills and he’s still too proud to die
Mr. Phillips never said anything behind nobody’s back
Like “Dammit Elvis, don’t he know, he ain’t no Johnny Cash”
If Mr. Phillips was the only man that Jerry Lee still would call sir
Then I guess Mr. Phillips did all of Y'all about as good as you deserve
He did just what he said he was gonna do and the money came in sacks
New contracts and Carl Perkins’ Cadillac
I got friends in Nashville, or at least they’re folks I know
Nashville is where you go to see if what they said is so
Carl drove his brand new Cadillac to Nashville and he went downtown
This time they promised him a Grammy
He turned his Cadillac around
Mr. Phillips never blew enough hot air to need a little gold plated paperweight
He promised him a Cadillac and put the wind in Carl’s face
He did just what he said he was gonna do and the money came in sacks
New contracts and Carl Perkins’ Cadillac
Dammit Elvis, I swear son I think it’s time you came around
Making money you can’t spend ain’t what being dead’s about
You gave me all but one good reason not to do all the things you did
Now Cadillacs are fiberglass, if you were me you’d call it quits
Three chairs in the shade.
