Jeff
-
The Men Who Helped the Inklings
Reflections on two lives lived in humble service It’s been nearly four years since the passing of Walter Hooper, the longtime literary executor of the C.S. Lewis Estate. I wrote a short reflection on Hooper back in 2020 when he passed and then posted it to a random blog I was trying to make happen at the time.…
Written by
-
“Live from New York, A History of SNL” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
With Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales have created an exemplar of the oral history form. Even better, it’s on a truly fascinating subject. Although I did not grow up watching much SNL (our family was…
Written by
-
“I Must Say” by Martin Short
Martin Short can make me laugh just by being on screen. Turns out, having listened to the audiobook recording of his 2014 memoir, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, he can make me laugh off screen too.
Written by
-
“Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin
Born Standing Up is Steve Martin’s 2007 autobiography tracing how he got his start in stand-up comedy and how he left it in the early 80s, decades later.
Written by
-
Little We See in Nature
On the built environment as sleep paralysis In René Descartes’s Third Meditation on the existence of God, he writes: I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, and withdraw all my senses. I will eliminate from my thoughts all images of bodily things, or rather, since this is hardly possible, I will regard all such images…
Written by
-
On Plankton
Trying to Find the Edges of the Built World The thought that has occupied me on my commute lately is about the worlds that we occupy. Mostly, we (or at least those of us who live in North America) live in a built world. It’s a world almost 100% permeated by human and technological influence. It seems…
Written by
-
Old-School Movie Magic
Fetish or Sacrament? My kids and I have been watching Light and Magic, a docuseries on Disney+ all about the history of the special effects house, Industrial Light & Magic. The series begins by outlining George Lucas’s rationale for establishing the company. His vision of a space opera that would merge the visuals of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:…
Written by
-
Awakening
A brief detailed chronicle of our minute-by-minute dislocation This entry — long overdue — tracks some of the ways that we find ourselves unsettled from a creaturely way of life even in just the first few minutes of an average day. My hope is that it will also uncover counter-movements and signs of what Charles…
Written by
-
Looking Backwards – Part 2
Having recently discovered (with the help of my brother-in-law) some of the earlier roots of the Brethren in Edmonton, I have been wondering about shifting gears and, rather than pushing still further back in time to understand the sources of Scottish Revivalism, instead to trace forwards the gradual development of assembly life from the first…
Written by
-
The 1907 Edmonton Conference
My brother-in-law recently gave me a copy of a slightly creased, but in relatively good quality, folded notice for an “Annual Conference of Christians Gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ at Edmonton, Alta., December 27th, 28th, 29th 1907.” The notice (which I have scanned below) is very useful for understanding more about…
Written by