New gifts every morning
Of blessed memory
Jon Flaming (Am. 1962-), Peggy Sue BBQ, Dallas
Teachout on Stoppard
Two-and-half years after his death, I miss reading new essays (and reviews and blog posts and tweets) by Terry Teachout. Here’s a good piece about Tom Stoppard, whom I also will miss profoundly, someday. (He said, perhaps naively).
a reason for early rising
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner
David French on where to look for threats to Christ's kingdom: [www.nytimes.com/2023/07/0...](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/opinion/christian-right.html)
Two(+/-) for Three
SCOTUS last week:(1) Affirmative action - yep.
(2) Student loans - yep.
(3) Refusing to sell services to folks you disagree with - nope.*
A web-design service is just that -- a _service_; it's not an expressive act. You're a hired hand. If you offer services, you can't say, "but not for the gays." * update: nope-ish. For some fool reason, Colorado agreed to stipulate that the plaintiff was, in fact, engaging in personal expression in creating webpages for hire. I don't get why they agreed to that, but there it is. Makes the ruling less wrong. Maybe not right, but less wrong.
from "East Coker" | T.S. Eliot
And what there is to conquerBy strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Trite, perhaps. But true. Often, the “tried and true” is trite. But, so what? The truth is the point.
Panhandle scenes at 75 mph. XIT
forty-three years
Pals or, maybe, Frenemies
One of my favorite pieces at the Met
06:04 mdt
Happy Birthday to this (T)ACLLEH!
Out the window
LES
june seventh
Happy Birthday to this one: 
Firstborn.
Happy Anniversary to these two:
Miss them.
Laura's Garden | Bush Library, SMU, Dallas
Mom's vase
big and bright
Winter After the Stillbirth | Renee Emerson
My husband dreads the winter. Born
himself on the darkest day of the year
and disregarded, he sees nothing
but black ice, danger of pipes
bursting, other people’s cats freezing,
left outside like a name scratched
off the list.
But fish still swim
beneath the frozen surface of lakes,
and there are frogs that let their blood
ice over in the mud to thaw again
in the spring, green Lazarus come forth.
And even I, born on the last day of winter,
can see how the snow can cover this all up
to look cleaner than it ever was, for a moment
at least, while it is still falling in our hair,
in our up-turned, hope-filled faces.
High windows
