Helena Sullivan

What if your son at seventeen announced that Henry & Mudge, Billy & Blaze, and Frog & Toad are all good enough for him? In fact, he plans only to read these books till his life’s end. That would be bad, bad, and ever bad. Why is it, though, that we are content to sing praises to God with worship music that remains at the third grade level or below? If you ask Grok to run a basic reading-level analysis of the top 100 praise and worship songs today, you will discover they rate at the first-grade level. This week at our parish school, I listened to our children’s choir singing Rise Again, Ye Lion-Hearted, and as I looked around at them, I realized that the song was calling them higher up the mountain of worship. They were being called up to worship the God who told Adam to name the things of this world. A boy respects his father for the terminology he knows, and he wants to grow up to be like Dad. Dad knows things. This movement is beautiful—of the young son standing to fight alongside his father. It is the most powerful scene in Homer’s Odyssey—maybe in all of literature—and its significance is baked into the fabric of the world. So why oh why are we content to let ourselves stew in the slush of third grade forever and never go any higher? It’s Henry and Mudge forever with us apparently.

@RickDeVos Sounds made up! How funny.

American Excellence.

What a depressing invention. I still think with great fondness on the sweet girl who filled my wine glass up to the brim in Tarragona when with two little kids in tow, and my father, I arrived 6 hours past schedule at our hotel because we were delayed by an accident right by our exit. I said nothing of this to the kind server, but she must have read it all in my face. The kindness of the pour.

Look at my sophisters, calculators, and economists, dawg. The age of chivalry is gone and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

One tomato to rule them all, one tomato to find them, one tomato to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

"Keep in step with the Spirit," Paul says. What are the Spirit's steps? He's like wind whose origin and end are unknown, but whose voice is heard. He's leaven, imperceptibly leavening a lump. He's water, giving life all and taking the lowest place. Or, he's a rushing mighty wind with tongues of fire. Do that to keep in step with the Spirit.

Man Cured Of Depression After Doctor Prescribes Millennium Falcon LEGO Set buff.ly/pUTjV1L

@GMRench It reminds me a bit of when I was six and was quite fond of unsubstantiated claims like, "Boys are dumb."

@GMRench Another thought, too: Dale is making an argument without a rubric. Sounds like he is just sharing his feelings.

When I see Pastors say dumb stuff like this, I can’t help but think two things. First, they’re going off their experience with women in their own church, which is sad if so. And secondly, these pastors fail to see that there own inability to disciple and preach the word of God to the women in their own congregation is the bigger problem. And here’s the fundamental problem with Dale‘s tweet. It condemned himself. Joel and Dale clearly have lost the ability to think, which means they should not be in church leadership anymore.

That's why William F. Buckley liked to say, “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory, than by the Harvard University faculty.”

Highways that cut villages in half.

Old English diphthongs are fascinating and often inexplicable, but one of the most interesting is ⟨ea⟩, which was almost certainly pronounced as /æu/ or /æa/ for most of the OE period. It's important to emphasize that there is essentially zero chance that it was pronounced /ea/. So why on earth did they spell it like that?? The only decent explanation is that they didn't like writing trigraphs, so ⟨aea⟩ was out of the question. Hogg calls it a digraph 'faute de mieux' - for lack of something better.

Scientists Discover Tea Tastes Best When Dumped Out And Replaced With Coffee buff.ly/qrEsJVH

Amish Man Smiles Smugly As He Rides By Gas Station With $6 Prices buff.ly/uwInEM2

@alancornett Population collapse, high debt of disillusioned Millennial parents--not to mention the striking weirdness of many college grads of the past ten years. "Behemoth U," as the great Russell Kirk called it, is going down.

The system is collapsing in real time. In a decade higher ed will be unrecognizable from what it was prior to this decade.

@alancornett Ladyhawk soundtrack

Perhaps a built in flaw of being an ’80s kid is the natural affection one develops for synth pop.

@alancornett And the best Sherlock too.

Ah, a great loss. My favorite Watson. May perpetual light shine upon him.

It makes sense though my mummy told me to read Homer, too.

@PerfInjust Castiglione's Courtier book fits. The idea of sprezzatura originates here.

Which Christian books on masculinity encourage men to lose weight and/or dress well?

@RickDeVos Yet nobody thought to spring for $20 to buy some better lightbulbs for that room.

Priorities

@BMcGrewvy Everybody's allowed to go early Eustace Scrubb on mediocre movies.

Project Hail Mary just dropped on digital. Anyone who missed my somewhat wet-blankety review can catch up here: furtherup.net/p/the-man-with…

@ae_stallings And MY favorite Holmes. Brett is best.

My favorite Holmes quotation: