All posts by Phil

Blogs, Socials, Writing

Blogging Gets You Writing

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Frank Wilson writes about blogging and creative writing. “If there is any benefit to be derived from blogging it starts with the doing of it. Writers write. Blogging is a good way of finding out if you have what it takes to sit down at regular intervals and write something. For someone like me, who already has deadlines to meet, it’s a good way to start the work day, like practicing scales.”

Still, I feel the need to write fiction or prose more, and blogging pulls me away from that. I want to pray more too. So I need to watch my time use.

Poetry

“Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun”

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I.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

II.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

III.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;

And having done that, Thou hast done ;

I fear no more.

“A Hymn to God the Father,” by John Donne

Fiction, Publishing

Eco-Kiddy Lit

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Megan Cox Gurdon writes about eco-propoganda drowning our children.

Contemporary children are so drenched with eco-propaganda that it’s almost a waste of resources. Like acid rain, but more persistent and corrosive, it dribbles down on them all day long. They get it at school, where recycling now competes with tolerance as man’s highest virtue. They get it in peppy “go green” messages online, on television and in magazines. And increasingly, the eco-message is seeping into the pages of novels that don’t, on their face, necessarily seem to be about environmentalism at all. . . .

Thus we have the spectacle of a 12-year-old becoming distraught when her father orders seared tuna at a restaurant (this happened to a friend of mine), on account of over-fishing, or a 6-year-old (son of an acquaintance) panicking at the prospect of even a yogurt container going into the trash: “But I can use it as a toy!”

Oh my soul. For balance sake, I know a child who asked to have a pink pocket knife to go with her pink rifle, so that when she shoots a deer (or whatever animal) she can clean it. She’s a good, little reader too, so no snarking at her. (HT: Loren Eaton)

The Press

Journalism, American People in Crisis

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Tax Day

Rick Pearcey writes about CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s reaction to the tea parties, saying his vulgar snarking was not journalism at all.

Not only is what Cooper said deserving of ethical condemnation, but it also reveals a principial breakdown between journalism and urinalism, where there no longer is a line of demarcation between facts and propaganda, between reporting and demonization, between knowledge and Goebbels.

Pearcey points to the weakness of the liberal, secular worldview as the reason for mainstream journalism’s problems. If this seems a bit over-the-top, perhaps you’re with me in not understanding the vulgarity in the first place.

Kyle-Anne Shiver of American Thinker also decries our news agencies.

Whenever close to 300,000 middle-class Americans put their productive lives on hold on a midweek workday, make original signs with their own hands, and travel miles and miles to stand with other private citizens just to demonstrate their anger with government, in more than 300 cities from coast to coast and everywhere in between, that’s NEWS. Continue reading Journalism, American People in Crisis →

Uncategorized

Haunted by Grief

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Edvard Munch was Norwegian. Perhaps, that’s why he said, “Disease, insanity and death were the black angels that guarded my cradle, and … followed me throughout my life.” Obit Magazine has a piece on his painting, Death in the Sickroom, and a little about his life.

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Top 10 Forgotten

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Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels. Check your library or bookstore. Have you read any Pulitzer winners over the years and noted their overall strength or beauty? I could say some things about Beloved, but not right now.