I sit here thinking about how things aren’t going right. Plans I’ve made, how I’m feeling — stuff isn’t how I want it to be. Ironically, even plans I’ve made as a pastor for Holy Week aren’t how I had hoped. I get wrapped up in all of that and then I have to return to the central truth of Holy Week: it happened because we human beings have broken the world. That things aren’t how they are supposed to be is precisely the point.
It is sad to see a newspaper die. It is sadder still when that death is a particularly gruesome suicide. For just under 15 years I was associated with a small paper in my small town. I wrote a weekly column — this column — for all of that time; for four rewarding years I was also the paper’s photographer.
When the pandemic first hit, we quickly watched various staples become hard to purchase, including — as plenty of memes gleefully remind us — toilet paper. Though less attention grabbing, meat, milk and other essentials also became harder to find and that pushed me to rediscover an old friend: Aldi.
The phone call came exactly when I needed it. It was Bob Bernstein, with whom I’d never before spoken, calling from Rhode Island. “You haven’t been online, so I figured you might be having a problem,” he said. Indeed I was.
The Zippy Boys are back with an episode packed with March Madness musings, analysis of the Russian war against Ukraine, living life with a disability and hope we find in God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.
You probably don’t remember it first-hand — I don’t — but during World Wars I and II people established what were called “victory gardens.” The idea was that if people grew some of their own food instead of buying it, it would free up supplies to feed our fighters in Europe and the Pacific. It’s time to revive the practice, though for a different reason, and this is the time of year to plan and prepare. Food prices are rising, due to a phenomenon we wouldn’t have imagined a year or two ago: we have actual food shortages.
Back in mid 2019, I was on the market for a new laptop. My old laptop was plagued by issues that, while farily minor, where a deal breaker for me. Thus, I got a shiny new Dell laptop which seemed to fit the bill just right. And it did… mostly. Enter 2020 and the pandemic. Most work I had to do was from home, and that meant using my laptop. Thus, that poor Dell laptop’s keyboard got quite a beating. Again, I wrote thousands and thousands of words as part of my daily job. The laptop soldiered on, but at some moment the keyboard began to act up. What could I do? I considered my options.
The phone rings in the White House and Bugout Joe Biden, his pre-existing cowardice now exacerbated by geriatric enfeeblement, answers. White House aides let him answer it himself because it’s the hot line from Russia, and every day at about this time it rings. Biden answers, the voice on the other end, Vladimir Putin, says, “BOO!”, and except for Biden’s attendant having to get him a fresh Depends, no harm is done.
It happens every March — I am exhausted and it is still light outside. Yes, yes, it is the week of Daylight Savings Time and the effect of the switch is wearing on me and, I suspect, also on you. This is probably not the time to argue against the Sunshine Protection Act, Sen. Marco Rubio’s proposal to eliminate the time change, but here I am.
It is said that those who can’t, teach. To which I’d add that those who can’t, and who also can’t teach, become bureaucrats. If they clean up well, their path to the loftiest halls of government is clear.