Pool Season Begins

Cannonball!

The school year is over at Baylor, the kids have one week left, I shaved my face, and we have new vinyl in our swimming pool.

Soccer season is over, we have a full lineup of camps and other activities on the horizon, and I’ve shifted my focus to numerous projects that have been on my shelf, waiting for me to pick up.

This Friday, I’m celebrating. Summer has effectively arrived.

An appeal: I’m putting together a list of books to recommend to my kids as part of an incentivized reading program I am designing. If you have literary classics, book series, or stand alone novels to recommend that are appropriate for elementary and middle school aged children, send them my way. I’m building a list!

Book Notes

Still reading Ron Chernow’s Washington, and I just cracked open Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

I finished Sonke Ahrens’s How to Take Smart Notes and Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan. I liked The Ruins of Gorlan, and have invited my son to begin reading it. If it catches on with him, I’ll keep reading the series.

I also finished reading a work of political philosophy by Joshua Mitchell, American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time. The argument here is this: In America, religion has collapsed into politics, and identity politics has subsumed Protestant sensibilities. Categories of guilt and innocence remain, but we lack a mechanism for atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Whereas before, Christ served as the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, delivering us as our scapegoat, now, certain identity groupings must serve this function at the expense of other identity groupings. And thus, we devour ourselves.

This book was not an easy read. It’s a meaty argument, one that I don’t think we are willing to have. I fear I know people who, if they read this book, might experience a Scanners moment.

Sights and Sounds

Listening to a lot of the same old stuff and haven’t had time for movies or television. I do plan to watch The Matrix Resurrections over the weekend.

Last Words

On the blog: thoughts on waiting, an inflation story, a reminder our time is brief, reducing digital distractions, and a joke about Tender (yep, spelling is intentional).

Before I go, standard copy.

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Be well this week. Bless others.

Best,

BAS

P.S. - The before scene.