Ten Things

Ten things I noticed on my way to work this morning:

1. The sky heavy with approaching rain, gray and moist, tasting of the sea.

2. A solitary yellow leaf drifting to the sidewalk on Broadway near my subway station at 96th Street. The leaf fluttered and swooped like a swallow.

3. Passengers swaying like sea grass on my packed subway car.

4. Streaks of orange—local train tracks outside the window of my express train reflecting the subway tunnel’s sulfurous light. I thought of car headlights in an overexposed photo, shooting stars.

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I’m Unsuitable

At the risk of sounding like a crank I have to say that when it comes to Sesame Street the world has taken a decided turn for the worse.

Like practically every other child in America in the 1970s I grew up watching Sesame Street. Recently my mom bought a DVD of classic episodes for my daughter Frances to watch. We rigged up a laptop in the living room (we don’t own a television) and slipped in the DVD.

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Fort Hood: A Chaplain Speaks

I was all set to write a blog about my kids today when this story appeared: shootings at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, at least 12 dead, 31 wounded. Details are sketchy as I write but the story shakes me deeply.

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Laughter and Forgetting

Newborn babies move like shellfish thrown on shore. Their arms and legs wave helplessly. They struggle to roll over. They are out of their element.

But their faces! My wife Kate and I just had a baby, a boy, Benjamin. He’s a week old now. Last night I held him in my lap and stared into his sleeping face. He was solemn. His blonde brows were furrowed. His mouth curled the slightest bit down. Suddenly his brows shot up in a look of mild surprise. He smacked his lips. He sighed. His head rubbed against my hands.

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Integrity

Here’s a poem I came across:

“First Leaf” by Lia Purpura

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Ugly New York

I watched an old movie last night, The Taking of Pelham 123. A remake came out earlier this year. I didn’t see it. I don’t want to see it. The point of the first one wasn’t the plot (silly) or the action (there is none). The point was the city, New York.

The original was made in 1974, when any movie set in New York was really about New York. And any movie about New York was about America.

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Where the Wild Things Are

Ever hear of a movie director named Spike Jonze? Maybe not. Chances are you’ve seen his work, though, or copies of it. He directed the movies Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, both of them heady, weird, self-referential and whooping fun.

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Fortunate Fall

Summer ended this week and I was glad to see it go. Of course it’s not really over. Real autumn is weeks away and it’s still warm. But for the past few days the humidity departed and that’s what matters.

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American Christianity: Revealed!

What do Americans believe? Everyone thinks they know but no one really does. You would assume, with all the raging debate about the place of faith in American public life, that someone would have compiled a reliable set of statistics spelling out exactly what Americans believe and how they act on those beliefs.

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Swimming Lessons

The pleasures of parenting, no matter how small, are intense. This week Kate, Frances and I took a quick vacation trip to Cape Cod. Our last day there we spent the morning at a pond with a sandy beach. The weather was hot but the water was just right, like a bath after it’s cooled a bit. Perfect for kids.

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