The 2008 Booklist

I’ve been logging the books I finish for several years now.  This list does not reflect all the books I picked up, started, and put down, or the books I read parts of deliberately.  I felt like I read fewer books this year than usual, but the count is close to those of previous years–the [...]

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The Sky in Motion

Today’s APOD is a glorious four-minute video called “The Sky in Motion”: sun, moon, stars, clouds, meteors moving overhead, the great dance brought to you by the earth’s rotation. Don’t miss it.

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You are what you eat, and then some

And in my experience, you write what you read, and listen to, and pay attention to.  Herewith, a listing with some commentary of my own recent and current media intake:
Reading
The Sharing Knife: Passage, the third in Lois Bujold’s latest series.  I am tempted to summarize this book as “Fawn and Dag meet Huck and Jim [...]

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Deep inside your own heart

It’s a pity, a gentleman in refined retirement composing poetry:
He models his work on the classic verse of China,
And his poems are elegant, full of fine phrases.
But if you don’t write of things deep inside your own heart,
What’s the use of churning out so many words?
–Ryoukan, translated by John Stevens
I’ve always been a good writer.  [...]

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In Pursuit of Mysteries » Blog Archive » The Fortunate and Ongoing Disaster of Lay Life

In Pursuit of Mysteries » Blog Archive » The Fortunate and Ongoing Disaster of Lay Life.
Al has reposted an interesting, thought-provoking teaching on lay vs. monastic life in Buddhism.

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Confessions of a choirgirl

The first time I sang in a church choir, I was six or seven years old. I was going to a Lutheran church at the time, the same church where my sister had gone and where she had been confirmed. I was actually younger than the minimum age requirement, but they let me join anyway; [...]

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Saint Lucy’s Day

A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY’S DAY,
BEING THE SHORTEST DAY.
by John Donne
‘TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to [...]

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Song for Guadalupe, whose feast is today

Guadalupe, Coatlicue, Tonantzin!
Dark and comely you appeared to Juan Diego
Beautiful like his own mother’s Indian face
Tenderly you appear to us still with our own faces,
Our own mothers’ faces, with open hands.
And so we come, as we always have, to heap roses on your altar.
Did you crush the serpent under your feet, Guadalupe,
Or did you shelter [...]

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Report from the trenches

Very busy at work today–tasks left over from yesterday plus a new shipment to process.  To quote my boss, “YUCK!”
On the plus side, I have a copy of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, as translated by Edward Snow, and three pre-programmed Christmas stations on Pandora.  I was amazed by Rilke’s New Poems and wowed by his Sonnets to [...]

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Tom’s hermit shack and webcam

On this day in 1968, Thomas Merton, monk and writer, died while attending a conference of Buddhist and Christian monastics in Bangkok.  He was apparently electrocuted by contact with a standing floor fan, possibly while still wet from a shower.  Having read many of Merton’s letters and all seven volumes of his published letters, I [...]

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