I’m still in a holiday frame of mind, so instead of pushing to get this post together for Saturday morning, I slept super late, tried to jump start the oldest of our cars, took the trash to the landfill (which I have done most Saturdays), and played around the whole afternoon. Taking trash and recycling to the county landfill is a chore I picked up years ago when our pickup service was increasing in price and my income was, if I remember right, nothing. I’ve been telling myself I can afford a service again, but we haven’t signed up yet. Even with trash pickup, we’d still have to take our own recycling to one of the area collection points, because that additional service is a bit much.

So many fans have asked me about this, I felt I could no longer put them off. A heart of kindness, that’s what I have. Here are a few links to better reading.

Faith: “Parents define for their children the role that religious faith and practice ought to play in life, whether important or not, which most children roughly adopt.” Of course, there are huge exceptions.

Reading through Bibliotheca, “an elegant, meticulously crafted edition of the Bible designed to invite the reader to a pure, literary experience of its vast and varied contents.”

Beauty in nature and art: “Fragrant grass, who knows who planted you,/ Already spread in several clumps there by the terrace?”

Charles Lamb: “‘[Y]ou never know exactly when [Charles] Lamb is speaking seriously.’ … The same applies to such Lambian literary cousins as Laurence Sterne, Max Beerbohm and P.G. Wodehouse – writers many readers will never get.“

“Cleanliness” by Charles Lamb:

Come my little Robert near—
Fie! what filthy hands are here!
Who that e’er could understand
The rare structure of a hand,
With its branching fingers fine,
Work itself of hands divine,
Strong, yet delicately knit,
For ten thousand uses fit …

Photo: Look Sharp Barber Shop sign (painted 1969 Volkswagen), Yuma, Arizona. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.