Everything/Nothing/Someone is the 2023 memoir of 39 year old Alice Carriere whose only claim to fame is that she was the only child of a famous artist and actor. One review said, “At 35 she has quite a lot to tell.” She thinks she does, but does not. But like Jefferson Airplane taught us: “Go ask Alice.” Continue reading
My blogs are usually 30 to 40 weeks in the “hopper” before being published. It doesn’t ensure quality as much as assure against “poison pen” posts. (And poison pen letter is another expression that will have to be defined for anyone under 20 or mayhaps even older.) Continue reading
This 1861 statue is in England is the oldest known statue of the most famous nude.
A mentor of mine who for decades was a circuit counselor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod told me that when he was working with a church that had a pastoral vacancy, when the topic turned to salary some old German always said, “How cheap can we get him?” He didn’t seek to muzzle the ox. Just to limit its eating. Continue reading
There is such a thing as the tyranny of conscience. This early quote from Luther applies: Luther’s own appraisal of his “Here I Stand” 95 Theses in a 1518 letter to his superior, the Bishop of Brandenburg, said in part: “For I doubt some of them, am ignorant about others, and deny some, while not positively asserting any, but submitting all to the holy Church’” (Plass, Ewald, This is Luther, 201). Susan Howatch in her The Starbridge series of novels covers an Anglican cathedral from the 30’s – 60’s. A young priest’s revelatory moment, saving him from a nervous breakdown, is the sudden thought, “I may be wrong.” This is what I find is lacking in many of today’s Confessional Lutheran pastors. They have a drop- dead certainty about things that the Lord has not said, and this leads to a tyrannical conscience. This is a letter from Oliver Cromwell that addressed this tyranny. Continue reading
I’ve come to terms with “sometimes perception is reality”. Finally, I’m able to expose it for the fallacious thinking, even more to the point, the solipsistic thinking that it is. Continue reading
You can say something is excruciatingly funny or that a comedy is excruciating. “But the root sense, all pain, is: ‘to crucify.” The Lain ex functions as an intensive. Cruciare ‘to crucify’ has the generalized sense to torture. That’s from John Ciardi’s 1980 A Browser’s Dictionary (123). The 2024 Merriam-Webster largely agrees with this saying under etymology: “derived from Latin excruciatus, past participle of excruciare “to torture,” from ex- “out of, from” and cruciare “to torment, crucify,” from cruc-, crux “cross” — related to cross, crucial, crucify “Excruciating” (Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/excruciating. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024). But Merriam-Webster give us the direct connection of “out of the cross” which makes any Confessional Lutheran pick up his ears, and now we’re to the excruciating 21st century. Continue reading
It’s not often that I prefer a remake of a song to the golden days of the 70’s. I first heard Linda Ronstadt’s “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me” while drinking beer in a car with a college friend on the banks of the San Marcos river. I didn’t recall ever hearing it. Linda in ’78, wasn’t the first to record it. Another band did in ’76 but not to much notice. I was satisfied with Linda’s version till I heard Terri Clark’s version in 1996. Give it a listen here. 
This is a play on the Public Service Announcement I heard from time to time growing up in the in the later 60s and mid-70s. “It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?” You’re going to think this blog is about autism or Asperger’s when it’s really about AI. Continue reading
