Seen yesterday: at least a dozen spry old guys in their late 70s, at various points on the beach, trotting along in wet suits, with long boards under their arms, flirting with bikini-clad women five decades their junior. Silver-chested endless summer. Jimmy Buffett lives. Surf culture, which was once young, cheap and rebel-spirited is now..
Is it just me or is it even more crazy than usual? Most of us sense the big streak of pure crazy at the heart of the world’s order — that vast pool of “plain wrong” billowing up like dangerous waters below us. Christianity makes it no less than a central dictate: “Do not love..
I think those of us who fancy discussion, reason, fair play, and even the right to ridicule bad ideas make the mistake of thinking other people do too. There simply is no reasoning with the implacable Facebook Community Standards people — if they really are people and not bots. So I’m done with Facebook, both..
An email conversation from August of 2020.. “Barb” (not her real name) is a friend from high school and an ER Doctor.. Jim Riley: Freedom Rally and Protest! FOUR LIVE BANDS! (Note: at the time, here on the farm, we were pitching a live outdoor event, focused on ending the economic lock-downs) Barb: This is..
When I was a young teenager, I had the keen sense that you couldn’t make “Commie” jokes or register any alarm about the threat of Communism. In 1973, it wasn’t so much about McCarthyism as it was about your own reputation. The left had successfully characterized anyone justifiably worried about Communist totalitarianism as a goat-roping..
When people struggle to get close to God, to find a God they don’t feel is near, wise old men usually give counsel in this order: alms, scripture, and obedience. Alms: Try it one of these days. Do something wonderful for someone who can never pay you back. Do it in secret. Don’t tell a..
..or is it getting dark around here? People often give me free, bad business advice. This usually comes from leftist ideologues who can’t brook a difference of opinion on any political issue and would prefer their favorite apple farmer keep quiet. I say “bad” advice, but the vast majority of young social media consultants would..
Am I reading this wrong? So I read and re-read the Bible, slowly, usually over about 18 months at a time. I like to consider the Word, post the Word on social media, discuss the Word, argue about the Word, read commentaries about the Word– and see if I understood the great Father God Creator..
A Short Story So I guess I have to say I’m happily conventional. Bottom line, I’m not even likely to buy a house without cornice moulding, much less spike my hair, wear pink shorts, chant cross-legged, or apologize for the Fourth of July. You can do that if you want to, but I got very..
A Short Story At the beginning of the pandemic, Russell Pym had been indulging a new reading obsession, “all things flu.” The possibility of sudden, arresting lung failure, of drowning in his own fluids, of dying at age 27, all of that worked like a steel rasp grating away at the soft pine in his..
