Should you be wondering, you are not reading one of the 100 best blogs as listed by the incredibly talented and a truly decent man of the 21st century, Bryan Appleyard. No doubt, BwB would have made the top 200–maybe top 1000–list, but that’s no reflection on the generosity, the heart-felt love, and profound goodness of Mr. Appleyard, who set about the task at hand with expertity. He calls them as he sees them. He is a blessing to the blogscape (his word to replace “blogosphere”),even if someone killed himself on his blog the other week, which could happen to anyone. (via Books, Inq.)
Category Archives: Blogs, Socials
Finally! The recognition we deserve!
Thanks to Sally over at Fine Old Famly, who has (if I follow how it works, something I’m not entirely certain of) awarded us a Premio Dardo Award. It’s a sort of chain award, requiring you to pass it on to 15 other bloggers, with the ultimate Ponzi-like result that eventually everyone will have one and it will mean nothing.
Still and all, she says nice things about us, and that doesn’t happen often (at least to me). So thank you Sally.
I’ll have to think about whom to share it with. I should probably let Phil select some of the recipients. Or all of them, if he’s in the mood.
Update: There’s actually only a few literary blogs I read with any regularity. So they get the prize for my part.
1. Kevin Holstberry’s Collected Miscellany. Kevin has wide-ranging interests, and the books he reviews are pretty eclectic (or so they seem to me. I suppose everyone considers anyone else’s reading idiosyncratic).
2. The View From the Foothills. A very good Christianity/Books blog I’ve been following for years.
3. Roy Jacobsen’s Writing, Clear and Simple. Great advice from a good writer, when he bothers to blog. Which he’s been doing more often lately. Maybe this’ll encourage him.
4.I Saw Lighting Fall, the blog of our commenter and friend Loren Eaten. Like all excellent literary blogs (such as this one), he casts a wide lariat and talks about a range of subjects.
5. The Maple Mountain Story Club, domain of another of our commenters, S. D. Smith. He deals with books and writing, and also shares bits of his own work.
6. I think Patrick O’Hannigan’s The Paragraph Farmer can also be called a literary blog, though that’s only one of many subjects covered. Patrick is, as I used to be, a regular contributor to The American Spectator.
Phil’s additions:
7. Frank Wilson’s blog, Books, Inq., is invaluable to me, so I should honor him first. He does blog with a team, but he’s the leading man.
8. Jimmy Davis does good work on and off the screen. He blogs at The Cruciform Life.
9. The Thinklings don’t need an award. They are just about awesome without one. Still, I offer this to them.
10. I doubt the guys at The Rabbit Room need an award either. They actually have albums, books, etc. to fool with, but they have a strong blog. Bravo.
I’ll stop there. I’m listening to Phil Vischer speaking at Moody’s Founder’s Week right now. It’s stirring. He said if we’re focused on being in the middle of God’s will today, then where we’ll be in five years (our ministry or personal vision) is none of our business.
A poem for the inauguration
Hey Phil, do you like this one better?
The Bell Tolls
Personal blogging has been declared dead. I should post my random musings on that sometime.
What We Know About Ourselves
For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy — this pride is innate in all of us — unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 37)
From a new blog of Puritan Quotations
“Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine”
Thanks to Will Duquette over at The View From the Foothills, for tipping me off to Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.
The discovery of this blog raises two questions in my mind:
a) Why didn’t I know about this before? and
b) How can I go on blogging, knowing the competition is doing stuff this brilliant?
What’s it like? Sort of like one of those Monty Python animations, only you read it.
Another conversion story: Orson Bean
Sometimes I forget, but God is still at work in the world.
Over at Power Line, they’ve posted Orson Bean’s account of how he came to faith.
Sacramone reviews Eszterhas
Over at Strange Herring, Anthony Sacramone writes “a strange review” of Joe Eszterhas’ earthy memoir of his conversion, Crossbearer.
Suicide, in theory
It’s winter now. Not full winter. It’s snowed a few times (it snowed a little today), but there’s no accumulation to speak of—yet. Winter has been sneaking up on us in an Avoidant manner—hanging around the edge of the conversation, gradually making its presence known without drawing too much attention to itself. But today was seriously cold. And naturally I began to have trouble with the starter on my car. Not the usual kind of trouble, but the peculiar variety that goes with the Chevy Tracker’s idiosyncratic ignition system, which involves tramping down on the clutch while turning the key.
Ah well.
Rev. Paul T. McCain of Cyberbrethren wrote a moving and thoughtful post the other day on the subject of suicide. A friend of his took his life recently, and in meditating on it, Rev. McCain quoted a statement of Luther’s I’d never read before. This is part of it:
“I don’t share the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned. My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil. They are like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber. . . .”
This was one of many statements of Luther’s they never told us about in the church I grew up in. We were taught the view (which, I believe, used to be taught by the Roman Catholic Church as well) that suicide left one with no opportunity to repent of the sin of murder, and therefore could not be forgiven. This view doesn’t actually jibe very well with Lutheran grace-centered theology, but that never occurred to me.
It must be a great comfort to the families of suicides to believe this, and I’m glad of that.
But I have reservations, too. (If you’ve recently lost a friend or family member to suicide, I recommend not following on to the portion of this post below the fold. It might upset you, and I have no wish to do that. I want to consider an argument here, not rub salt in wounds.) Continue reading Suicide, in theory
Book Recs for Kids
Sherry recommends books for giving to children.