All posts in June 2007

Few people would think that my life provided any poignance or intrigue worthy of popular attention. How much less do I exemplify the sort of haunting, twisted narrative characteristic of Ira Glass’s This American Life? Yet last week, Margaret and I played our parts in an eerie tale of extraordinary synchronicity, or coincidence, or Providence.…

I’m not sure whether it was a short planning meeting that lasted painfully long, or a a long planning meeting that went by fast. The “long” part involved sitting in on deliberations that bear relatively little upon my areas of strongest interest; I’m not part of the “affinity group” or “community of practice” that ATS…

Im spending the day at a planning meeting relative to technology and theological education, hosted by the Association of Theological Schools. Some of the folks I already know, others new to me. If everything works out right, we’ll be hosting a conference, maybe two, about the ways technology can support the missions of ATS member…

Cheers to Frank, who has been named an Honorary Fellow of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin!

Ray Larabie, of Typodermic Fonts, has put together a carefully-selected treasury of typefaces for casual use — some are free, and others inexpensive. For what it’s worth, I can sum up my typographic advice to most people and small organizations (such as churches) in two principles. Select one serif body-copy typeface family and one sans-serif…

Last night we prevailed upon Jennifer — big puppy-dog eyes, and sniffles — so she posted her photos of the previous weekend’s festivities surrounding Margaret’s and my twenty-fifth anniversary. If you start here, you can click backward through the pictures until you see Mile running around the car — that didn’t happen last weekend.

The way things have gone this year, I shuddered when I read Slate’s headline for a Christopher Hitchens story entitled, “My Beef With ‘Rage Boy’ ” — though a rhetorical cage match between Chris Locke and Christopher Hitchens would certainly yield some blood-curdling polemical piledrivers — but the article isn’t about that Rageboy. Whew!

Margaret and I were probing the mystery of the different appellations for Thomas Aquinas’ major work this afternoon. Some sources give Summa Theologica, “Theological Summa,” and others Summa Theologiae, “Summa of Theology.” There are high stakes among Thomists, we gather, but we aren’t sure who lines up on which side, or why. As we were…

The other night as I was lying awake, my thoughts rambled about the popular-music trope of the “book of love.” There’s the Monotones’ classic single, of course (“Oh I wonder, wonder, who boo-pe-doo, who, who wrote the book of love”), but Elvis Costello invokes it in “Every Day I Write the Book” and Nick Lowe…

This morning while we were waking up, Margaret asked me, “Agoraphobia — isn’t that ‘fear of open places’? What about ‘angoraphobia’?” He: “You mean, ‘fear of fuzzy cats’? Or are you thinking of ‘Igoraphobia’?” She: “ ‘Fear of hunchbacks’? Oh, dear; what about ‘angeraphobia’?” He: “ ‘Fear of wrath‘?” She: Or “ ‘Al-Gore-aphobia’?” He: “…

Tuesday night, the kids and I went to New Comiskey to see the ball game. We had a wonderful time, for the most part. The game was close, the teams played decent ball (especially considering how weak the Sox offense has gotten), and the game was tied going into the ninth, the beer was. .…

Yesterday I wore my “I’m blogging this” t-shirt all day — and I didn’t blog.