Parts of Speaking Publishing

 I subscribe to The Dispatch and The Free Press. These are conservative yet gay friendly. From the Free Press: That darned car . I can’t believe that car did that. Must’ve been a Waymo. Oh, it wasn’t? I’m getting word that this particular car was driven by a man who . . . was previously convicted of terrorism offenses. He had been given a suspended sentence and was reportedly ordered to attend 26 counseling sessions with a center specializing in deradicalization and extremism prevention. And you’re telling me the specialized counseling didn’t work? The BBC quoted police saying that he was on “the Islamist spectrum,” like it’s bisexuality or autism or something. They apparently changed it to “a member of Berlin’s Islamist scene.” Well, now it just sounds fun! What’s good on the Islamist scene these days? Finally, they changed it to “Islamist circles.” Three tries! ----- I find this funny.

 Conservative news media, more than mainstream and progressive, is awash with the reveal of Anthony Fauci's "diary" during the "COVID YEARS."  Diary implies a personal book; these were notes kept on a government-owned computer, which is why Rand Paul was able to get them. considering the content he recorded on those machines, I can only ask one question: What was he thinking? Why in the world would you put personal gushes about celebrities paying attention to you on a work computer? Some of the stuff sounds like the ravings of a teenager.  Even I know better than that! Emails also should be as oblique and impersonal as possible. I got embroiled in a lawsuit once. I know that anything on a work computer is fair game for lawyers.  The fact that he kept those records shows he wasn't as smart as we were led to believe, and we can probably extend the lack of smarts to what he did or didn't know about COVID.

For several years I have heard, and used, the quotation, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” For the longest time I thought William Faulkner said it. He said something else about the past. The past is never dead . It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence. And to prove we can easily get quotations and their attributions wrong, I thought that was “In the South, the past is not even past.” No, he wasn’t talking about the South then. He does have a great quote about Mississippi. To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi . That is so true about fiction writing (and other matters), I want to stop there for a minute. It applies to just about anywhere you could write about—Dalton, GA or Southwestern Virginia, Maryland suburbs of D.C. or Los Angeles, CA. But I think Faulkner is getting at the need to see a place different from th...

It is late July in Northwestern Georgia. The forecast today is for a high of 94 degrees. I have walked my dog already by 9:15, so that he and I can avoid the panting and the perspiration that yesterday sucked us dry of energy. I sit inside with two fans and some indirect air conditioning on me, with no plans to go outside for more than a couple of minutes today. Tomorrow should be better. August is always a little better with the heat here, with shorter days of sunlight and leaves starting to say, "It's enough, we will give up our lives." Yesterday I pulled up my beans. They have yielded, but I did a poor job of creating a frame for them to expand. I may plant another two rows, and plan for a better skeleton of sticks. The okra lives, and the peppers, but tomatoes languished this year and zucchini and cucumbers seemed prefer May and June. Rain would be welcomed. But I remember that it falls on the just and unjust, and that rain does not make the choice of who it falls on ...

Let us descend now into the blind world,” Began the Poet, pallid utterly; “I will be first, and thou shalt second be.” And I, who of his colour was aware, Said:”How shall I come, if thou art afraid, Who’rt wont to be a comfort to my fears?” And he to me:”The anguish of the people Who are below here in my face depicts That pity which for terror thou hast taken. Let us go on, for the long way impels us.” Thus he went in, and thus he made me enter The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. There, as it seemed to me from listening, Were lamentations none, but only sighs, That tremble made the everlasting air. And this arose from sorrow without torment, Which the crowds had, that many were and great Of infants and of women and of men. To me the Master good: “Thou dost not ask What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are? Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, That they sinned not; and if they merit had, ‘Tis not enough, because they had not baptism Which is the portal of the Fa...

 Islam is evil.  That is not saying every Muslim is evil. It is saying the worldview, system of beliefs, and expected behaviors are evil.  https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/07/iran-shutters-landmark-church/ There are some practices that are more based in the cultures (such as FGM --if you don't know what that is, you can look it up, and child sexual exploitation) but the religion of Islam does not stop those practices and in some ways facilitates them in those cultures. I spent some time in a "secular" Muslim country. There is no religious freedom, although there is freedom to be indifferent to Islam in one's practice. But conversion is persecuted.

 This writer addresses some questions I have dealt with. What is beauty? Where does beauty live? How is it achieved? and should we give all for beauty? https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/01/being-christian-writer-costly-virginia-woolf-christina-rossetti/

I was asked to teach life group tomorrow, sort of at the last minute. I am blessed to have a good educational background in Bible study and close reading.   A Pivotal Point in the gospels, Matthew 12:1-14   I am going to start differently today, and this is not to take up time. When you start to read the New Testament, you realize there is repetition in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They tell some of the same stories, and they tell unique ones. Only Luke tells the story of Zacchaeus and the two men on the road to Emmaus who meet Jesus, for example. But all three tell about the feeding of the five thousand, as does John’s gospel. But when you read them carefully and slowly, you see that these are not just cut and paste, but they tell the accounts with different details and purposes.   Last week we read Mark 2:23-3:6 as part of the lesson about the disciples, but this lesson is about the same story in Matthew. We are going to read it three times so we can see how ...

I have a few days where I do not even have to leave the house (well, the neighborhood, in a car). So I am reading: my email (which is a treasure trove), Dante's Inferno (for a podcast on Friday), books on Appalachia for a novel, NT Wright on the first century world and its connection to the church, and some fiction. From an essay in Christianity Today on tourism and pilgrimage: But whether our destination is a martyr’s grave or a crystalline pool, the pilgrimage mindset is a fallacy. Tulum isn’t holier than Toledo. Paris, Texas, is just as filled with God’s grandeur as Paris, France. Jerusalem is made out of the same stuff as New Jersey. Because the Holy Spirit indwells Christians, we don’t need to go anywhere to better experience God.   I am going to Greece in November, God willing. But that may be my last such trip. I doubt I will ever get to the "Holy Land." That would be nice, but by the time Israel is safe again I may be too feeble to maneuver that terrain. I visited...

  https://newsletter.oalannoble.com/p/what-happens-when-no-one-is-curious?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=2pwl1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email First part: Former Google employee and current neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff has published a chilling article at the New York Times on Google’s shift from giving links to search queries to offering AI summaries. You may not have thought much about this shift, but it’s radical and is changing how many people perceive the world. Google has 91% of the search market share . This is how people get their questions answered (although increasingly they will turn to AI—more on that in a minute). In the past, Google didn’t give you answers to your questions, they offered up links which may contain various possible answers. You may find several links to Reddit where people offer various answers. You may find a Wikipedia site. You may find scholarly sources. You may find government sources. You may find commercial sources. You ma...

For my current devotional reading, I am studying The New Testament and Its World by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. It is a thick, textbook-like tome, and their interpretation of Jesus in his world is meant to bend evangelical world views and smugness, I think, that we know everything about Jesus we need to. He (I assume this is Wright because of the style) closes this chapter  (11, "The Death of the Messiah," p. 261) this way:   Granted all this, it is worth highlighting how this might shape our own understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. When we speak of 'following Jesus,' we are talking about the crucified Messiah. His death was not simply the messy event that enables our sins to be forgiven and which can thereafter conveniently be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God, the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we disco...

 The Supreme Court's decision on birth right citizenship was a decision to do nothing. It kept things the way they have been for decades, or a century.  So some posts on X, such as below, means a. all conservatives are against birthright citizenship, and b. all conservatives are stupid and apocalyptic.  I don't like that anyone born in this country is automatically a citizen, but anyone includes me.  The post: It seems to rage at two SC justices in particular. To be clear, I don't agree with this. Several ways forward here given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language: 1) Nullification. States issue birth certificates, and they can just stop issuing them to non-citizens. Roberts/Barrett can deal with the fallout and litigate each birth individually. 2) Pack the court. If Robert wants to be a politician who writes laws instead of a judge, then he can fight with 10 more unelected legis...