February 2020
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I say that even though I had never seen it until a few days ago, when it arrived in the mail, announcing its return. I didn't know it had been away. I've been hearing about Eighth Day Books for years, but didn't know much more than that it is a highly regarded Christian bookseller, with…
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I'm just barely making my before-Ash-Wednesday deadline for this last of three music posts, so I'll be brief. I avoid reading reviews before encountering the thing itself, whether the thing is music or book or film. But I like comparing my views to others' after I've formed my first impression. After hearing this album once…
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I guess we've all heard people say of this or that style of music, generally one they don't care for, that "it all sounds the same." And from a casual distance it's usually a fair assessment. After all, Metallica and Megadeth sound vastly more like each other than either sounds like Bruce Springsteen, and someone…
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Isn't that an evocative title? I have a mental backlog of music that I've been meaning to write about, especially non-classical music. As I'm planning to go on a sacred-music-only diet for Lent, which is now only a week away, I'll try to get several of them out of the way before then. As of…
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Some intriguing comments from Mark Frost at the Welcome to Twin Peaks web site, which I guess I should look at more often. On The Return: The themes we were looking at were different. All of that is reflected in the show. I think it’s an older and somewhat sadder and wiser look at the world.…
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I'm constantly fighting the temptation to spend, or rather waste, a lot of time talking about current events, the perishing republic, and so forth. I believe it was in the very first year of this very long-running blog that I mentioned that urge, and noted that there was not much reason for me to carry…
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I don't mean "Can I have a word?" in the sense of "Can we talk privately?" I mean literally a word. I've been working on a piece of writing that includes this: "the Church as it is, dullness, factionalism, and all." I want another word to go with those two, a word that captures the…
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As a fan of ambient music, I admit that I've sometimes asked myself the uncomfortable question: is this really any different from Muzak? (If you don't know that word: it's the brand name for the service that provides background music for stores, offices, and so forth. Like "Kleenex", it also serves as the generic term…
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I really can't claim to be a connoisseur of beer, but I have pretty strong likes and dislikes. (That sounds like the old "I don't know much about art…" line. Well, so be it.) I don't entirely understand things like this, the "tasting notes" for this beer at the Guinness site: Aroma: Light and hoppy…
Light On Dark Water 