Life Update 2025-12-08
Current status: (~updated 2025-12-08)
- Emacs update: I used it for 2 months and got used to the keystrokes I needed. In the end I decided that Obsidian is the program that is best for me to use since I write mostly in Markdown and my notes are stored and easily retrieved there as I write. The same would be true of Emacs if I decided to learn to use it in that way, but I’d rather save the time and trouble and stick with what is working for me. I am satisfied that I did finally give Emacs a go.
- We still have not got the permit to fix our septic system. We got the inspection after 6 weeks and nothing after that. There is an apology on their website for slowness due to the move of the department from here to there and some kind of update, etc. We are doing fine since the system still works as long as we keep water use way down. I see it as preparation for our climate future.
Reading:
Read:
- Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher
- The Rose Code by Kate Quinn - World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over. Excellent historical novel. The ebook was 654 pages and I read it in 9 days, so I was engrossed.
- Life, Loss, and Puffins by Catherine Ryan Hyde - YA by an author who gives me stories with heart in troubled situations.
- Christophany: The Fullness of Man by Raimon Panikkar
- The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage
by Richard Rohr
- The Oracle - Peter Cawdron - In WWII a German soldier contacts an strange artifact in Delphi. One of Cawdron’s First Contact series. I marvel at the ideas he comes up with.
- A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters - 3 short stories introducing Brother Cadfael
- Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon - I loved this story about 18th century Maine, a midwife married to a lumberman, a murder, and greed. It was intriguing and also quite beautiful amid the wickedness.
- A Morbid Taste for Bones (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael #1) - Ellis Peters - I had thought I’d read the whole series, but have decided I’m not all that interested in life in 1120 in an English monastery. I’ll go ahead and read the last book in the series to see how it ends.
- Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances by Catherine Keller - A very interesting look at the Book of Revelation. Keller does what she calls “dreamreading.” This is not an interpretation of the prophecy and it certainly is not predicting the future through it. It’s scholarly work, I’d say. In it I saw how a system present in that time remains present.
Currently Reading:
- Rabbi Jesus by Bruce Chilton
- Selected Writings (Meister Eckhart) editor Oliver Davies
- Why Religion?: A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels
- Religion in the Making by Alfred N. Whitehead
Podcasts:
3 New ones:
Wild Card with Rachel Martin: Once a week, famous guests pull questions from a deck of cards and open up about the kind of stuff we all think about but rarely say out loud.
Sources & Methods: National security, unlocked. Each Thursday, host Mary Louise Kelly and a team of NPR correspondents discuss the biggest national security news of the week.
Radiolab: Hard to describe this one - all sorts of things and really well done. I listened years ago and recently came back.