April 29: If there was no such thing as electricity...

...you wouldn't be reading this

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Dec. 6: Embroidery

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 Chuck Klosterman is one of my comfort writers. I have read a few of his books but two of them have stuck with me. I WEAR THE BLACK HAT is a meditation on villains and the nature of villainy. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE is about a cross-America trip in a rented car where Klosterman visits the various sites where rock stars died. It should come as no surprise that the book ends with him dropping in at the place where the music died. February 3, 1959. A plane crash that claimed the life of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and a pilot who no one remembers. The pilot's name was Roger Peterson. I mention him here because his life was also valuable even though he wasn't a rock star. Roger Peterson, died at the age of 22  I listened to the audiobook of KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE today while driving up to Petawawa to do a magic show. It is about the sixth time I have listened to that book. My brain is stupid. Instead of seeking out new information and new stories, it keeps insi...
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Dec. 8: The Christmas pickle

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 Here is the legend of the Christmas pickle. I am not making this up. This is an actual legend that involves Santa Claus himself, St. Nicholas. According to legend, a long time ago, an evil butcher killed three little boys, cut up their corpses, and put them in a barrel full of brine, hoping to sell them as pickled pork. St. Nicholas - perhaps fresh from throwing money in a poor girl's stockings or punching Arius in the face - happened on this butcher shop and, with a holy touch and a prayer, restored the three children to life.  I should think that those three boys suffered from PTSD the rest of their (new) lives. And even today, it is customary in some homes to hide a Christmas pickle on the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Whoever finds that pickle gets an extra present or gets to decide on the order of the present opening. As for me, I want to see a movie about the life of St. Nicholas that incorporates all the legends: punching Arius, resurrecting hacked up children, and ...
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Dec. 1: Something I'm grateful for that most people take for granted

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 My church. Martin Luther King once said that Sunday is the most segregated hour, meaning that we tend to go to church with people who look like us. The integration, by contrast, takes place the other six days of the week. This does not apply to my church. I go to a Dutch Christian Reform Church in Cornwall. That denomination, by the way, supported the South African apartheid movement and because of this, was expelled from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982. Four years later, it changed its stance - thanks, Holy Spirit - and, following repentance, was allowed back into the alliance four years later. It is a dark blot on my denomination's history. We look to the future while learning from the past. - My church is not segregated. There's a whole lot of people from Myanmar there. One of them is a gifted musician who plays a mean guitar and has an amazing voice. There are three Myanmar girls who, from time to time, do interpretive dances to Christian hymns.  My church...
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