May 2011
50 posts
2 tags
Things I'm Pretty Sure About: 2
Am pretty sure that if we keep going just a little bit farther on our bike rides we’ll someday go too far to ever go home.
3 tags
Things I'm Pretty Sure About: 1
Am pretty sure hard work is the antidote for being too hard on yourself.
Sometimes...
I think about moving to a city—where it’s dark and quiet at 5AM.
“I know that running a doctor’s office or grocery store in rural America isn’t...”
– A New Missions Field | internetmonk.com
Church-subsidized small businesses… It’s actually an excellent idea.
4 tags
Thinking About: Reupholstery
Adora’s Shop by mi.ventana
A few years ago I bought a couch from a friend to furnish my one-chair apartment. It’s not a spectacular couch, but it’s wide enough to curl up in and long enough to stretch out on to catch a nap. It’s red plaid, and I want to recover it.
When my mom was growing up her mother reupholstered furniture in her shop in her backyard. When I was...
Certainty
In December of 2001 my mother and I were in Israel. On New Year’s Eve we were in Nazareth, staying at a convent guesthouse. It was a bad year for tourism in Israel so we were some of the only tourists in the whole town, but staying down the hall from us in the convent was another mother and daughter. They were Dutch. A younger pair than my mother and I.
We spoke with them briefly, but they...
2 tags
Meanwhile, The San Francisco Public Library - The... →
Wendy MacNaughton draws the SF Public Library.
Spring
The other day we walked by a yard full of peony bushes just on the verge of blooming. This is my favorite time of year. It has everything, really. Hot and cold, lush green grass working its way through last year’s brown. Bare fields that are hardly barren. Newness is everywhere, but we’re still working the old into the ground. And there are peonies. Almost.
1 tag
Paradoxical
It’s hard to connect with all the disasters in the world. Sometimes it takes a while to know a disaster—to grasp its magnitude. If that’s even possible.
I thought about this yesterday as we slid over the water, skipping on our own wake as we followed ducks in flight. The river is still high here, but the streets are bare again, and the high water mark on trees is well above our...
1 tag
“The river, ecologists and farmers say, was never supposed to follow the tight...”
– The Untamable Mississippi River - NYTimes.com
1 tag
N'Existe Pas
There’s this stretch of Illinois riverbank. In a photo on my desktop. A friend took the photo the other day as we stood with our elbows on the railing of a gazebo on the Iowa side. It’s a panoramic view that includes the locks and the bridge.
Today I walked out to the same spot with my own camera. I wanted to capture a particular area just to the right of the locks.
I stepped out...
StoryCorps: A Victim Treats His Mugger Right →
crookedindifference:
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait...
2 tags
Three-Day Ideas: Two Months on the Mississippi
One of the awesome things about being in limbo are Three-day ideas. Three-day ideas go like this:
Day 1—I have this great idea for long-term project/short-term/occupation/vocation/etc.!
Day 2—Research!
Day 3—This could work!
Day 4/Day 1—I have this great idea!
And so it goes, on and on.
I am currently on day 2 of the Two Months on the Mississippi idea, which means...
“It’s OK.”
– Another Look: It’s OK…to Just Be a Christian | internetmonk.com
“There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people...”
– RYAN ADAMS. (via onedayisaw)
