homefries.org

My friend Sam gave me the best food tip ever: A. Russo and Sons in Watertown, Mass. Here’s just a sample of their eggplant selection last weekend:

(Click for larger size.)

(Try clicking on one of the dots, or pulling the scroll bar down and clicking and dragging.)

From a blog called The Agitator: How to baconify your bourbon

Why would you want to put bacon in your bourbon? If you have to ask, this isn’t the post for you.

(A tip of the hat to, yes, Andrew Sullivan–hey, the guy has staff. I promise I’ll come up with something original soon. Or maybe point to Kottke. Yeah, that’s it, I’ll switch to Kottke for my next post.)

BLDGBLOG presents an introductory essay and photos from Library of Dust

There’s a spectacular new book coming out at the end of this summer called Library of Dust, by photographer David Maisel, published by Chronicle Books. . . . In 1913, Maisel explained, an Oregon state psychiatric institution began to cremate the remains of its unclaimed patients. Their ashes were then stored inside individual copper canisters and moved into a small room, where they were stacked onto pine shelves.

Image from Library of Dust by David Maisel, published by Chronicle Books

(A tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan.)

Amazing Light Photography by Alan Jaras.

(A tip of the hat to The Daily Dish.)

Andrew J. Brown, an English liberal Christian Unitarian, blogs at CAUTE: Some more thoughts on Garden Academies

. . . if liberals are going to get real things done in these difficult times then we need to recall that our power has always been in the cultivation of small and ever-evolving gardens which, collectively, show something real about our liberalism which includes, of course, a commitment to the incredible diversity and vulnerability of all life upon our home planet. The moment we are tempted to scale up to bigger institutions we begin to resemble, not gardeners (i.e. people actively commingling with the world) but managers (i.e. people who act at a distance from the world).

And Martin Kelley, a Quaker (I won’t hyphenate him!) blogs at Quaker Ranter: Is it Convergent to talk about Convergence?

Just the last thing is that for me if our work isn’t ultimately rooted in sharing the good news then it’s self-indulgent. I don’t want to create a little oasis or hippy compound of happy people. Friends aren’t going to go to heaven in our politically-correct smugness while the rest of the world is dying off. It’s all of us or none of us. If we’re not actively evangelizing, then we are part of the problem. “Convergence” is Quaker lingo. When we say it we’re turning our back to the world to talk amongst ourselves: a useful exercise occassionally but not our main work.

Hmm. I’m not sure the two quotes I’ve chosen do the best job at showing why I think these two posts are related, but it’s the best I have time to do at the moment!

Over at John Scalzi’s Whatever (home of cat photos, sunsets, and the famous bacon on a cat): I Don’t Know Art, But I Know What I Like

Now up for bid, this absolutely stunning piece of modern work entitled ‘I Will Be There At The End of All Things, or, The Shreddination’ by the prodigiously talented artist Zeus Scalzi.

Warning: Those who don’t appreciate puns or potty humor can pass on this, but in general I heartily recommend Whatever.

The Spring 2008 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin has a lovely essay by Marilynne Robinson, “Credo.”

History up to the present moment tells us again and again that a narrow understanding of faith very readily turns to bitterness and coerciveness. There is something about certainty that makes Christianity un-Christian. Instances of this are only too numerous and familiar. . . .

My habit for a long time has been to consider disputed and in some cases discarded doctrines on the theory that if in the past thoughtful people have found them meaningful, they might in fact be meaningful, though, of course, meaningful is not the same as wholly sufficient or correct. Take for example the two terms in that venerable controversy, free will versus predestination. There are problems associated with both of them, but in such great matters problems are to be expected, and problems have their own interest and their own implications. In the universe that is the knowledge of God, opposed beliefs can be equally true, and equally false, and, at the same time, complementary, because contradiction and anomaly are the effect of our very limited understanding. As a writer it is important to me to remember always, or as often as I can, that we inhabit a reality far larger and more complex than our conception of it can in any way reflect.

Sadly, the website has only a short excerpt from her essay, but it is well worth getting a copy of the issue. (I found the following essay unreadably over-written–my colleagues assure me it is par for academia–but there’s another wonderful and readable essay on Confucian thought, “Rooted in Humanity, Extended to Heaven,” by Tu Weiming, which isn’t online at all.)

The relay portion of the Relay for Life in Second Life has now begun. For the next 24 hours, people will be celebrating, learning, mourning, virtually walking, and yes, raising money for the American Cancer Society.

If you have not yet made a contribution (or even if you have and want to contribute again), you can do so using a credit card at my page on the ACS fundraising pages. (And a hearty thank-you to those who have already contributed!)

A wonderfully succint definition by lynnewu on Twitter:

social media are “presence by other means”, and that includes Twitter, IM, and SecondLife