mumby road
  • A thought
    Generally, the world says, "Work first, and benefits come after." (E.g., exercise, then fitness.) That's good, because, even for bad work, anticipating the reward eases the pain. But if you must pay after, that looming bill taints the enjoyment of the thing enjoyed. (Of course, taking joy in the work is best of all.)
  • analog days
    A 2011 photo of the Library of Congress' card catalog (now digitized).
    Source: Dr. Amy Brady A 2011 photo of the enormous card catalog at the Library of Congress (now digitized).
  • I love John Prine
    The moon and stars / hang out in bars / just talkin' -- "Summer's End"
  • Brooke Smith is so tender in this scene

  • ewr (1923-2022)

    Old sepia-toned photo of a happy little girl in a wagon holding a parasol. Today, this little girl would have been 100 years old.


  • Keep the light on
    Porch light at dusk with pine trees in background silhouette

    📷


  • Public Servant
    RIP, Sandra Day O'Connor
    Supreme Court Justice Sanda Day O'Connor in her judicial robes
  • You are what you eat
    David French: We’re misinformed not because the government is systematically lying or suppressing the truth. We’re misinformed because we like the misinformation we receive and are eager for more.... The market is very, very happy to provide us with all the misinformation we like. Algorithms recognize our preferences and serve up the next video or article that echoes or amplifies the themes of the first story we clicked.... It’s important to recognize that no person or movement is immune to the temptations of bespoke reality. We’re all vulnerable... That means following as many or more people who disagree with me as agree with me. That means reading the best and smartest people I can find who disagree with me. These practices help both challenge me and humanize my opponents.

  • My town in the Golden Hour

    Downtown Dallas, Texas USA

    Old Red Courthouse. A red stone Romanesque-style building. A mosaic sunburst on the facade of a downtown Dallas chapel. Downtown Dallas crosswalk with tall buildings behind. Early 1900s red brick low-story building with a glass-fronted skyscraper behind.
  • Hot Club by Marion Elliot

    Delightful Django (presumably) and friends by artist Marion Elliot, via the equally delightful Spitalfields Life. (Follow for many more treasures.)

    Illustration of 1930s Paris Jazz Guitarist by Marion Elliot.
  • Coaxing the last tomatoes from the vine 📷 🌱
    late season cherry tomatoes, red and green-going-to-red

    They taste better than they look. No surprise there, for “What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes?”


  • Ears down / Ears up 🐶

  • Welcome, Morning - Anne Sexton
     
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.  

    All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
    

    So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
    

    The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.


  • A difficult question
    Jonah Goldberg: "If Hitler’s bunker was in a hospital in 1945, you can be sure we would have flattened it from the air (no doubt after dropping leaflets—just as Israel has). But Israel has not done that. Nor should it do anything of the sort. They sent troops in—carrying incubators by the way—to minimize collateral damage...
    [What's a real solution to] the very real problem of Hamas using Palestinian babies to protect their murderers and rapists?"

  • If I were to open a pub, perhaps it would be "The Lamb & Puppy."

    Sleeping mini goldendoodle dog on a blue couch with a toy lamb in its mouth🐶


  • All In or All Out

    There is little excuse for pretending eloquence about the meaning of the Resurrection while holding reservations about whether the event really happened. The assertion that Jesus was raised from the dead cannot at the same time be theologically true and historically false.

    Andrew Christiansen, paraphrasing Carl Braaten - Covenant blog


  • Writers Who've Stuck with Me (or With Whom I've Stuck)
    an ongoing list
    P.G. Wodehouse • G.K. Chesterton • Dorothy L. Sayers • C.S. Lewis • Frederick Buechner • Kathleen Norris • Alan Jacobs • Terry Teachout • David French • Evelyn Underhill • Garrison Keillor, editor (for his Good Poems collections) • Naomi Shihab Nye • T.S. Eliot • Roger Scruton • John Donne • John Milton • Abraham Lincoln • Anthony Trollope • Jane Kenyon • John McPhee • David Brooks • Li-Young Lee • Tom Stoppard • Michael Chabon • Laurie Colwin • The author of the Johannine epistles • The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews • Witold Rybczynski • Angelo Pellegrini • Calvin Trillin (the "Tummy Trilogy" and beyond) • William Carlos Williams • Christopher Alexander, et al. (A Pattern Language) • Anne Lamott • Yuval Levin • Philip Yancey • Colum McCann • Hilary Mantel • William deBuys • Alex Harris, photographer • Victoria Goddard • Iris Murdoch • Virginia Woolf • Hampton Sides • Louis Menand • Sophocles • Charles Dickens • Jane Austen • Wendell Berrly • John Buchan • Dorianne Laux • Charles Portis • Annie Dillard 📘
  • Public Art
    "Tree Sleeves" on Kneeling Bois d'arc, Tietze Park, Dallas, Texas, USA bright blue, red, and pink chalk markings on the branches of a Texas bois d'arc tree in a Dallas park
  • Sorolla

    Really lovely paintings. “Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections” through January 7, 2024, Meadows Museum, SMU Campus, Dallas, Texas - Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish, 1863–1923) 🎨

    Oil painting - seashore with a small boat with a billowing sail and small naked children playing in the waves
  • TV Rec
    Megan and I are loving "This Farming Life," on Britbox. City folk have no idea what it's like to be a farmer or rancher. Highly recommended. 📺
  • Happy, happy Spurs days!

    (A feeling Spurs fans are not overly familiar with.)

    UPDATE: 3 straight losses + major injuries and suspensions = Unhappy Spurs days. Ah, well.

    Symbol of English football club, Tottenham Hotspur: a silhouette of a navy blue cockerel (young rooster) standing on a soccer ball ⚽️
  • Ghosts - Jen Rose Yokel
    Quick now, come now
to where the veil grows thin,
where the border between 
real and more real—so real
we can't bear it—shimmers
like ghosts going silently
into moonlit mist, to 
enfolding fog, a cloud
of silvered saints hovering
over the waters.

  • 23 Oct 2023, 07:29
    Sunrise with orangey-pink wispy clouds taken in a complex of early 1900s industrial buildings in Dallas, Texas USA on October 21, 2023
  • Conundrum

    Undecided.


  • Rare
    The terse explanation she'd given for her depression was a "bad breakup." Sam felt it had to be more than that, but out of respect for her, he did not push her to elaborate. They had the rare kind of friendship that allowed for a great deal of privacy within it. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

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