Rich Bledsoe, “Christian Imperialism”, over at Trinity House Institute. A dense and at times opaque article studded with some absolutely thrilling distillations of what it means for Jesus to be King—the above quote is among the least of these.
Crop duster over fields around Mill Road, Latah County, Idaho.
Jason Molina is dead.
“I think that industrial livestock processing is, like all technology, a kind of magic. Peasant meatsmiths, on the other hand, worked miracles, not sleight of hand. Rather than turn pigs into pork at an astonishing rate and in unfathomable quantity, they multiplied fishes and loaves and this feeds more people with less and more deeply.”
“I’m made for this summer logging,” said Arn Peeples. “You Minnesota fellers might like to complain about it. I don’t get my gears turning smooth till it’s over a hundred. I worked on a peak outside Bisbee, Arizona, where we were only eleven or twelve miles from the sun. It was a hundred and sixteen degrees on the thermometer, and every degree was a foot long. And that was in the shade. And there wasn’t no shade.”
“I hefted the chain and swung it at the table like a biker taking out an unsuspecting member of a rival gang. It rattled across the surface and the nails and chainsaw pieces bit fast into the wood. Extracting the weapon, I examined my work. In just three seconds I had added forty years’ worth of hard-won experience and poignant memories to about two square feet of the tabletop. The center board had a terrific gouge from where a chainsaw tooth had torn up a chunk of pine from around a nail hole.”
The Moral of Pierre by one Timothy Burke →
I’m not sure who Timothy Burke is or where exactly he’s coming from, but this is a superb piece on how neoliberal societies try to get people to change:
“If you want an explanation of the meanness of 21st Century American public discourse, for the fractures in the body politic, this will do as a starting place. “Get that guy to wear his helmet, because otherwise he’s going to cost you money.” “Get that woman to lose weight, because otherwise she’s going to cost you money.” “Hassle that couple because their kid plays too many video games and might slightly underperform in school and not make the contribution to net productivity that we are expecting of him.”
Questions concerning how people treat one another, I believe, are ultimately theological. Whatever we think people are will determine what we think the problems are and why we must solve them. If we think of people primarily as gobs of material or units of economic activity, then we’ll get diagnoses like the above-quoted.
But what would happen if we acknowledged man as the image of God, as capable having his humanity completed and fulfilled in Christ, brought into the fellowship of the Trinity, and finally able to live at peace with himself and his neighbor?
From American Guide:
THE WORLD’S GREATEST MINERAL SEA
SOAP LAKE, WASHINGTON
“For Stomach Troubles, Constipation, Headache, Rheumatism, or whenever a thorough constitutional remedy is needed, take Soap Lake Capsules. Price 25 cents per box.”
— 1906 advertisement for Soap Lake Remedy Company
At the south end of Washington’s ancient river bed, the Grand Coulee, you’ll find the healing waters of Soap Lake tucked among the columnar basalt cliffs and rim-rock slopes of the central shrub-steppe desert.
Containing 23 different minerals, researchers have determined that the chemistry of the lake has more in common with outer space than it does with Earth’s water. Because the alkalinity of Soap Lake resembles the moons of Jupiter, scientists have studied the lake in an effort to learn about the possibility of life on Mars.
Our human experience of the lake was nothing short of miraculous, as we polar-bear plunged the coastline on a windy day that topped off at cool 38 degrees. The soap-like waters leave behind an oily film that promises to cure what ails you. The plaque at the beach boldly declares that “…This is indeed a god-given body of water for to cure all the ills of mankind.”
And if all that isn’t remarkable enough, the city of Soap Lake plans to install a 50-foot Lava Lamp on Main Street. Just because.
Mullein on a clear Winter day.
“Parking garage, Adolphus Theater” by William Reagh, a photographer who lensed Los Angeles and its surroundings from the late 30’s until about 1991. I don’t know L.A. very well, but stuff like this is nevertheless just fascinating. The Los Angeles Public Library has a collection of his images that you should go get sucked into now. It’s good, solid, documentary stuff, with a fine sense of composition and light.
The Lord’s Prayer from Rachmaninov’s world-stopping Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, performed by the Cambridge King’s College Choir.
Eastbound BNSF stack train races out of Spokane in the failing late December light.
“There are meals that come in courses. Meals that use broths boiled for 24 hours, cuts of pork kneaded daily for a week. Meals in which humans share their humanness and become open and vulnerable with one another. You could call my hamburger a meal, but then you’d have to call piss marks in the sand a work of art.”
Blair Kooistra, photographer: Old forty-foot Northern Pacific boxcars loaded to their 50 ton capacity with wheat clomp across a rural grade crossing near Creston, Washington, bound east on the CW local returning to the mainline at Cheney. High-capacity hopper cars have just about done in the movement of wheat in boxcars in the west; in a few years, such scenes will cease to exist.
The Dying of thirst passage of this song is astonishing. Even more astounding is how important the skit at the end is to the song—and to the entire record. How is it that a blockbuster rap record climaxes with a baptism scene and the words, “Remember this day, the start of your new life, your real life…”?
good kid, m.A.A.d city might be my favorite record of the year.
Paul Hillier directs what I think is the definitive recorded performance of Arvo Pärt’s time-stopping Magnificat. The rich are sent empty away.
The Inland Northwest, as seen by satellites at night. In the northeast of the image, Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. Move south from there through the scattered pinprick towns of the Palouse through the twin lights of Pullman and Moscow down to Lewiston-Clarkston. Go west from L-C through Pomeroy, Dayton, and Waitsburg to Walla Walla (the city shaped like a hatchet). Then west again to the crab-shaped Tri-Cities and curving along the crescent of light in the Yakima Valley. North, then, from Yakima, through Ellensburg and to the Wenatchee Valley. Then back east, skirting Moses Lake and across the dark distances to Spokane.
My main thought looking at this dark and abstracted map is that I love where I live.
I loved Freaks and Geeks when it first aired. This pitch-perfect scene makes me want to revisit it. Bill alone making himself a grilled cheese. The mirroring shots between him and Garry Shandling (drinking, teeth, Bill pointing at himself). The laughing with food in his mouth. Comedy with this kind of pathos is, I think, one of the highest art forms.