Tag: life
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No Quarter
The bedroom was barren save some power tools, drywall sheets, and a step stool waiting for the work to begin again. I was home for Easter and my parents were renovating the basement and the basement room I’d called mine when I lived at home. The Cave I called it: in the basement and away from…
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How I Got to Now: A Librarian Year
This week I celebrated my one-year anniversary of librarianship. In my application essay for library school I wrote that I’d been a frequent library user for most of my life, yet had never considered working in one until recent epiphanies changed my outlook. Perhaps I thought of it like working at a movie theater—another regular…
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So Runs the Man Away or (The Unexpected Virtue of Synchronicity)
The theme that has defined my 2014, I only now realize, is synchronicity. That Jungian concept (“the occurrence of two or more events that appear to be meaningfully related but not causally related”) bubbled up several times this year, especially in what I was reading, watching, or listening to concurrently. For instance: To name only the…
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The Simba Life, Thrice
The third issue of my culture magazine The Simba Life is now live. Check out the full PDF, or peruse individual articles. There’s a listacular retrospective, an artistic rediscovery, a debate over which Relient K album is best, a coming-out story you probably have never heard before, and more. Below is the briefing I wrote to…
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Football is Fun
I love reading Ask Vic, the daily Q&A column from Packers.com writer Vic Ketchman. He’s a self-proclaimed “dinosaur” of football, accustomed to the old ways of the game but trying to adjust to the new ones. One of his responses on Monday stuck out as essential reading for football fans everywhere, but especially the fanatics whose…
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Encountering Robin
I was an intern at a large advertising agency last summer. One day I was at my desk when a fellow intern stopped by. “Robin Williams is here,” he said. Ha ha, I thought. Probably just trying to prank others interns. “No really,” he said. “He’s on the next floor up.” We had heard that he was there…
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The Ballad Of X
Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: “It would be nice if people were to understand that science is a special exercise in perceiving the world without metaphor, and that, powerful though it is, it doesn’t function as a guide to those very large aspects of experience that can’t be perceived except through metaphor.” Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle: “If…
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The Simba Life Quarterly
“Either run from it or learn from it.” This has been the motto and mission of The Simba Life as I’ve used it since its birth in 2006. My inspiration for the name came from The Lion King, but I’ve long desired to wrestle the Simba name and its connotations away from Disney’s grasp and forge for…
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Hoffman And Heath
I watched this video from the 2005 Oscars to remember the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, but was reminded when watching it that Heath Ledger was also up for the award that year. And now both men are gone. When an old actor dies we can look back fondly on his career and be grateful for…
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Now Is The Time
I’d like to thank two like-minded quotes for not leaving my conscience alone. I’m not thankful in the happy Thanksgiving sense—more like how someone keeps fighting an argument, if only with himself, though he already knows he’s toast. Fine, I give in, but I’m not happy about it. The first is from John Wesley’s “Sermon…
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Ru-thi-oooo!
My great friends Tone and Brian adopted a baby this weekend. Tone wrote about the process here, detailing the long, sometimes painful but ultimately fruitful journey they took from first beginning the process last year to finally holding their first baby, Ruth Marilyn, in their arms last Friday. When I first saw the name they…
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Information In The Little Way
Rod Dreher, in his new book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, writes about his sister Ruthie’s fight with lung cancer and about his complicated relationship with his family and small-town life in Louisiana. After her diagnosis, Ruthie told her doctors and loved ones not to tell her specifics about her condition, nor even how long…
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Trees Of Life
When was the last time you touched a tree? I see them often, I walk past them, I benefit from their biology every day, but I rarely touch them. They are no longer an inescapable element of our daily mechanized, plastic lives. Perhaps we wanted it that way: the inception of brick and steel and…
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In Heavenly Peace
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 NIV) Paul beckons us to present with thanksgiving our requests to God. But…
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The Pleasures of Whim
Brett McCracken was right to name Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction one of the five books recent college graduates should read. A quick yet deeply insightful read, this book was written, in the words of the author, for “those who have caught a glimpse of what reading can give—pleasure,…
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‘Let me die trying something new’
My cousin recently posted a quote from my Uncle Steve, who died of cancer in 2001. He was writing to a friend with whom it appears he was discussing the future and the stress of the unknown: Admittedly, not knowing the outcome of my plans can create stress. It takes a great deal of courage to…
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Winter’s Harsh Beauty
“Wisdom comes with winters.” –Oscar Wilde I’ve always taken for granted my ability to walk on ice. Growing up in the Wisconsin winters, I had many opportunities to work and play on the ice, whether it be to shovel the sidewalk or play a pickup game of broomball. You learn pretty quickly how to adjust…
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The Weight Of History
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. – Shirley Abbott Today, as on every veterans’ themed day, I thought of my grandfather. A lieutenant in Patton’s…
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New Wonders We Will Sing
Sandra McCracken’s In Feast Or Fallow is a true beauty. This collection of old hymns re-imagined is appropriate for any time and any mood, but especially for Easter. The peril and the promise, the despair and the hope, and the pain and the renewal of this holiday – it’s all in the hymns. The good ones tell Christ’s story…