milk and honey

This goes a long way to explain why it’s so much harder to live in Texas than it was 25 years ago: Why Is a Midland Billionaire Spending So Heavily to Support Ken Paxton?

My true love and our first-born (at Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle, NYC – also precious in its own way!) 📷

My mom died a year ago today, three months short of her 99th birthday. She was a time-traveler. Her death is still difficult to get my head around. She was a vibrant, fun, and intelligent woman, and I miss her a lot, even though she was in my life for a long time. Mom and Dad in their prime:

Andy Rooney?

"Texas natives are more likely to stick around their home state than people born in any other place in the U.S., according to a new analysis of Census data. ... Approximately 82% of people born in Texas still lived there in 2021 ..." [Texas Tribune, 30 Aug 2023.](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/29/texas-native-born-stay/) No surprise there. Anecdotally, in 1976, seven of my high school classmates and I drove together to enroll at the same college in California. Seven out of eight of us returned to live in Texas after college or graduate school.

Is this how judgment day will be? "... something that would have been terror, but for the joy, and joy, but for the terror..." -- C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Two Three games isn't much to go on. But, at least for those games, Spurs look like a much improved team -- emphasis on team. This isn't just Sonny and Harry Kane. It's Sonny, Bissouma, Maddison, Udogie, Sarr, Romero, Lo Celso (based on pre-season), Perisic. So far, so fun! COYS!

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Of all the websites in all the internets, the Dust to Digital Instagram account may bring me the most joy. [Check it out - Sound on and up!](https://www.instagram.com/dusttodigital/)

"Wilbur Scafe's Pack Trip: Ruth, 1932" by Lora Webb Nichols. From an extraordinary collection of photographs by Nichols, a photographer, businesswoman, and homemaker whose 24,000 photos open an intimate window into life on the Wyoming frontier in the early 20th century. [More -- many more -- here.](http://www.lorawebbnichols.org/)

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"The way to battle abstraction in our time is to embrace the material, the incarnation of our lives, the fleshy, complicated, touchable realities right around us in our neighborhoods, churches, friends and families. And this enfleshed, incarnational part of ... life and work deserves some extra attention now, at least for a little while... " [Tish Harrison Warren, My Hope for American Discourse](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/opinion/saying-goodbye-social-media-prayer.html)

(I am not oblivious to the fact that I'm sharing this advice via the very medium that's causing a lot of the need for this advice.)

"As I get older, I find that I care more and more about being a good man and less and less about career stuff. I think a lot of it is just a product of age. But the fact that I’m the last survivor of the family I grew up in plays a significant part. When my mom passed away last October, the only guide for how I behaved was asking myself how my parents would want me to deal with it..." -- Jonah Goldberg, ["In Defense of Manly Tears," Aug 4, 2023](https://thedispatch.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=7fb8ceb3bd59c7956b1df66729296a4c.1661&nosocial=1) 💬

"so much depends upon a green chair beside the brick wall ... "
WCW kind of morning. 📷

0.5 oz gin (Tanqueray)
1.0 mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)
0.5 dry vermouth (Dolin)
0.5 (or less) Cocchi Americano

I don’t know what to call it. And it’s a weird mix of 2 vermouths and 2 spirits. But… it’s really tasty!

Archie’s binky. 🐶📷

Per my true love (via Robt. Venturi), "Less is a bore." Archie (and I) like it!

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... the presentation of our bodies is our spiritual act of worship. It is a significant Christian paradox. No worship is pleasing to God which is purely inward, abstract and mystical; it must express itself in concrete acts of service performed by our bodies. [John Stott
Romans](https://www.ivpress.com/romans-jsbs) 💬

God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real. [C.S. Lewis
Perelandra](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100924.Perelandra) 💬

Spurs v. Hammers: Lots of fun in the West Ham box (plus, great game by Fabianski); lots of terror in our own (esp. set pieces). But, to return to point 1: "lots of fun" has been in very short supply lately, and this was a nice change. ⚽

Enjoying Rufus Wainwright's Folkocracy -- especially, Peggy Seeger's "Heading for Home," sung by Rufus and John Legend 🎵