Sorry I’m late. I interviewed a prospective renter this evening (yes, I finally got a call). I’m not going to describe him, because he might be whacko, or he might be a saint. Or neither. But if he’s a saint I don’t want to be talking behind his back.

We ended the meeting on an ambivalent note. One of us may call the other, or not.

The weather has been beautiful, in terms of air-to-skin compatibility and sun-to-earth face time. It was my weekend on set-up team at church, which is always a drag, but when I came back from church on Sunday, my obligation fulfilled, I noticed the bank thermometer said 50°. I went to the local Chinese buffet I just discovered (not the one I told you about before, where the hostess is cute but the food marginal; the hostess at this one is less cute but the food is much better). Then, to make the day perfect, I noticed that the local Dairy Queen has reopened for the spring, so I was able to buy my traditional after-Sunday-lunch Dilly Bar (you’ve got to get the kind made in the store; the factory-made ones in cellophane wrappers aren’t worth the trouble). So the day was perfect. I love Sunday afternoons. I made a commitment years ago that, since I considered myself a professional writer, I wouldn’t write for money on Sundays. That makes the Lord’s Day a weekly break from (some) guilt for me, and I bless the Lord of Sinai for it.

When I got home from work today, most of the snow had already melted from my front lawn. And my basement hasn’t flooded.

It’s not spring yet, but I’ll take what I can get.

Sorry I’m late. I interviewed a prospective renter this evening (yes, I finally got a call). I’m not going to describe him, because he might be whacko, or he might be a saint. Or neither. But if he’s a saint I don’t want to be talking behind his back.

We ended the meeting on an ambivalent note. One of us may call the other, or not.

The weather has been beautiful, in terms of air-to-skin compatibility and sun-to-earth face time. It was my weekend on set-up team at church, which is always a drag, but when I came back from church on Sunday, my obligation fulfilled, I noticed the bank thermometer said 50°. I went to the local Chinese buffet I just discovered (not the one I told you about before, where the hostess is cute but the food marginal; the hostess at this one is less cute but the food is much better). Then, to make the day perfect, I noticed that the local Dairy Queen has reopened for the spring, so I was able to buy my traditional after-Sunday-lunch Dilly Bar (you’ve got to get the kind made in the store; the factory-made ones in cellophane wrappers aren’t worth the trouble). So the day was perfect. I love Sunday afternoons. I made a commitment years ago that, since I considered myself a professional writer, I wouldn’t write for money on Sundays. That makes the Lord’s Day a weekly break from (some) guilt for me, and I bless the Lord of Sinai for it.

When I got home from work today, most of the snow had already melted from my front lawn. And my basement hasn’t flooded.

It’s not spring yet, but I’ll take what I can get.

I missed the first conference of the C.S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga, but I plan to make the Twenty-fifth Annual C.S. Lewis Lecture on March 26. Political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain will broadly address the topic of Lewis’ abolition of man. It’s free at 7:30 p.m. in Benwood Auditorium at UT-Chattanooga.

The National Book Critics Circle gave out awards last weekend. See their list here and their posts on each category here. John Leonard, book critic and former editor-in chief of the New York Times Book Review, received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, he made this interesting observation:

The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we’re better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks.

Yes, but isn’t the point of our critique to get to the praise from our peers on the otherside? We want to hear how clever we are, how sharp-eyed we are, that nothing can stand before our scrutiny. Our peers may not bother to read and actually judge our critique, and why should they? We are right, are we not? Oh, the books we could write if only we had the time.