I've been getting a kick out of these wizard memes on Instagram, but found this one quite touching.

It reminded me of the verse "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

And arguably not really related but a line from The English Patient that often pops into my head: "Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again."

There are many wonderful aspects of having a fully remote job; working the hours that suit me, being able to do things around the house (apartment), et&... but there are also terrible hazards, namely the accessibility of my couch and bed where I can lie and pass literal hours scrolling through Instagram Reels for an IV drip of dopamine.

There is also the illusion of connection; which raises the other hazard of remote work, which is that it's not unusual for me to spend a day or two or five without any meaningful human, in-person interaction. Having a long for that sated by watching a story of a former student vacationing in Croatia likely isn't healthy.

So I deleted the app from my phone (though not the account, for now). I'd prefer to post things here anyway, in spite of the fact that Google Analytics informs me that it gets all of 3-4 visitors per day. It's nicer being able to see things all in one place, with the blasts-from-the-past that I always enjoyed about Facebook (eg. today I see is the one year anniversary of Cafe Maud's soft launch, which is wild because it's since become such a regular haunt--we did Father's Day brunch there yesterday.).

Bought a WeWork day pass yesterday and worked at the space on Irving and it was great. So signed up for a membership. Good to get out of the apartment and have unlimited "free" coffee and kombucha.

People Hold On - Noah Reid

These days I get up on Saturday morning and drive to pick up the boys in Callicoon and turn around and drive back to Manhattan, then Sunday evening drive them back upstate and turn around and come home. But until a couple of years ago I kept an apartment in Cochecton and I would take the train up Fridays after work, and we would spend our weekends upstate mostly, and I would take the train back Sunday night.

I remember YouTube Music randomly playing this song one of those Sunday nights when I was on the platform at Secaucus just before midnight, and it struck me and I listened to it regularly for weeks.

Just a few days ago I thought of it and tried and failed to remember and find it. I could only summon some snippet about a last cigarette, and it wasn't enough for Google to help.

Then just tonight it magically popped up in my YouTube Music recommendations. Funny how these things work sometimes.

View from the inevitable Hampton Inn in Monticello. Fun contrast to an Instagram post a couple of weeks ago at the Four Seasons in Casablanca as though that were real life.

I've wanted to write about the past couple of months. Fasting through a Lent that encompassed my fortieth birthday and the thirtieth anniversary of my dad's death and concluded with falling in love and finding myself alone again in the cave Mary Magdalene lived in somewhere outside Marseilles. But you flip through Netflix and feel so overwhelmed with the sheer volume of stories; of what value is ones own? I think Ayn Rand had a quote that was something like "Just because it happened to you does not make it interesting."

On the flight back from Morocco I sat next to a girl who journals then throws them away. I always felt like those were the real writers. It might represent a larger flaw of mine, that if no one reads it and loves it, it (and by extension I) has no worth.

Lent has been wild and wonderful and unexpected with no shortage of opportunities to be (like C.S. Lewis) Surprised by Joy. In the midst of all that's gone on and all that remains in the final days of Holy Week, it's amazing to finish Nicky Gumbel's one-year devotional read-through of the Bible (which I think I've been working on through fits and spells for 2.5-3 years... 😳). This is the third read-through I've done and it's always a strange feeling to come to the end.

Helped stuff Easter eggs after church last Sunday. What a wholesome guy! Wildly impatient to be clean shaven again in just a few more days...

Wandering outside on a reasonably warm day and didn't want to go home. Eventually went on a walk-through of the Merchant House Museum.

Nail-biter win for our first game of the season and made it on the TV, Ma!

#BooksOf2025

3. Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception

6/10

GOOD: Brief, accessible, and interesting points
BAD: Feels a bit cursory; an assemblage of proofs of a point that doesn't need much proof

Not thrilled to be sharing only my third book of the year well into March! In fact, February was dominated by The Thin Red Line, with which I was nearly finished when Lent arrived and I decided to only read explicitly Christian literature until Easter.

At any rate, this little volume had caught my eye in The Strand a while back, so I picked it up.

At its heart, the book critiques the denial of authority of women in the Church, pointing to Mary Magdalene as the first Apostle; having been the first to proclaim the news of Christ's resurrection. Interwoven is an examination of the conflation of unnamed women in the Gospel with her, making her, in church tradition, a prostitute though this is not a Biblical view.

That's really about it, but the point is illustrated by various gnostic texts and apocrypha (new to me was the x-rated Greater Questions of Mary.)

Quick and interesting read, but probably not especially memorable.