Tag Archives: eji

Thanx 2025

Posted on by under Generic Rant

Apropos to the day, and in keeping with a tradition I’ve maintained for the past few years, I herewith present my annual cryptic list of a small sampling of items I’m thankful for on this Thanksgiving week and always.

  • Andraé… still
  • Reconciliation
  • Keeping connections
  • The Fit
  • WPL
  • The Swytch and the throttle
  • Dropins
  • Small group
  • Problem solving sessions
  • Psalm 109:8
  • Bryan Stevenson and EJI
  • The Sudbury diamond
  • Mary
  • Luke
  • A day in Nahant
  • Failures that lead to victories
  • Humility
  • Godspell
  • Orchard logo
  • Calls out of the blue
  • Sending and receiving letters
  • This painting by my granddaughter:
  • W@H script & book
  • Peacock journal
  • Lemonade stands
  • Pizza lunch with the gang in person
  • Memories of Jeff, Ralph, and Yiayia
  • Adventures with little ones
  • 13.5 mph
  • The porch
  • “Ladies in Black”
  • “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”
  • Wes and the crew at VSHS
  • Father Brown
  • Memoirs
  • Bottom of the 33rd
  • Deconstruction
  • Ken Burns

God and family are implied, as always.

On the subject of gratitude, here are two of my favorite quotes on the topic from one of the most quotable people of all time, G. K. Chesterton:

  • “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
  • “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”

Now a couple of thoughts from a lesser voice, me:

  • “Giving thanks is prayer for the past.”
  • “Generosity is gratitude in action.”

I hope and pray you have the most Grateful Thanksgiving ever. And that you have Someone to thank.

Goodbye Instagram ⃰

Posted on by under Generic Rant

I joined Instagram ten years ago this month, mainly to see pictures of family, promote my writing, and publicize philanthropic efforts I participated in. It was useful and fun.

The world has changed.

Most of my family has dropped out of the IG world, there’s no evidence it has helped sell any of my books, and its parent company, Meta/Facebook†, has become an enabler of the US kakistocracy and the miscreants in charge. I can no longer associate with a company someone accurately described as “a diabolical cult run by emotionally stunted men babies, institutionally enabled sexual harassers and hypocritical virtue-signalling narcissists” that is “able to swing elections, target body-shamed teens with beauty products and monetise millions of humans’ hitherto private data.”

I quit.

What effect will my quitting have on these deviants? None. So what’s the point? I’ll sleep better knowing I’m no longer supporting such malevolence. It’s the same reason you won’t find me at Walmart or any of the increasingly prevalent local casinos. I try my best not to support sociopathic behavior anywhere.

I’ll miss a lot of stuff I followed on IG:

The thing is, I can get at most of this stuff online in other ways, as evidenced by the links above. Besides, I survived the first 60 years of my life without IG. I should be able to get by the rest of the way without it. And I’ll have a lot more time, what with not getting sucked into the bottomless void of idiotic videos and photos of life hacks (often life-threatening hacks), people doing stupid things (I do enough on my own), ads for crap I couldn’t imagine ever wanting in a thousand lifetimes (items chosen specifically for me by specious AI algorithms), staged “candid” scenes (presumably made by shameless exhibitionists), AI-fabricated nonsense posing as reality (thus perverting our vision of actual reality), maudlin recollections of the way things used to be (but never truly were), and on and on and on (and on, ad nauseam). It seems as if it never ends. In a sense, it never does. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time.

Enough. Goodbye and good riddance to it all.

⃰ After a long deliberation about taking this step, I was inspired to finally make the leap by an article by one of my heroes, musician, writer, and all-around Renaissance man, Charlie Peacock. You can read it here.

† We have a Facebook account, but we rarely use it. Nevertheless, that’s going, too.