Category: music
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The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot
In keeping with the annual tradition of reading the best Christmas stories for adults (as well as the best Christmas stories for kids and the best Christmas poems), here is The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot: As you’ll hear in the recording, I was clued into The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot by Professor…
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Funeral Eulogy for My Grandpa Deno Bubba
This year I had planned on staying in NYC the whole holiday season, but my grandfather passed away very, very suddenly on Saturday morning, so we grabbed an emergency flight back to Illinois, rolled into town for the visitation on Monday night and I performed the funeral eulogy and graveside services on Tuesday. Tara recorded the…
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The Second Christmas by F.K. Foraandh
In keeping with reading The Best Christmas Stories, here is The Second Christmas by F.K. Foraandh. It’s a short one, but it’s a really interesting philosophical and theological meditation. It’s a fictional piece about what may or may not have gone through the minds of the holy family as, during the second Christmas, they started to deal…
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Gloria in Profundis by G.K. Chesterton
In keeping with our annual tradition — Christmas readings of the best Christmas stories — here’s a poem by G.K. Chesterton entitled Gloria in Profundis. It’s a poem about how the fall of God is greater than the fall of man: If you’d like to hear more of the best Christmas stories, click here. cover…
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A Christmas Carol Stave 3 : The Second of Three Spirits by Charles Dickens
Keeping my tradition of Christmas readings of the best Christmas stories, here is A Christmas Carol Stave 3 : the second of Three Spirits by Charles Dickens. This section focuses on the ghost of Christmas present: If you’d like to see more of the best Christmas stories, go here. Stave One Stave Two
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Six to Eight Black Men by David Sedaris
In keeping with our tradition here of the Best Christmas Stories, I’m reading Six to Eight Black Men by David Sedaris. I have Andy Nash to thank for showing me this one. It’s a story about how the Dutch dress up in blackface to accompany Santa Claus — and why we too might have such offensive and…
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Best Christmas Stories : Annual Christmas Readings
Every year, I add some more of the best Christmas stories to my backlog of Christmas readings. This year, I’m a little more organized: I’ve streamlined my recording equipment (by which I mean my iPhone uploads a whole heck of a lot faster than that thing which plugged into my old iPod nano as well…
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Buffalo Flower Laura Burnhenn
My sister Lauren graciously gave Tara and I tickets to William Fitzsimmons last night for Christmas and we discovered the wonderful, moving protest songs of Laura Burnhenn. She played Buffalo Flower for us last night and I don’t think any song in my life — any hymn, any protest song, anything I’ve written only for…
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Punk folk — what is it?
I recently sent the following picture to Kyle and Doug Welch as well as Mark 9: You read that right. The name of this band we met in Salem, Massachusetts during Uncon 2016 is: Scrummy the Dirtbag & his shitty kids Now. Turns out that the lead man “Scrummy” is an economist by day. Kiel…
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Artistic Resistance :: Reflections
IN Aids to Reflection, Samuel Taylor Coleridge says the following (he often enjoyed employing the use of all-caps): READER!—You have been bred in a land abounding with men, able in arts, learning, and knowledges manifold, this man in one, this in another, few in many, none in all. But there is one art, of which…
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Saturn by Sleeping at Last
It’s very, very rare that a songwriter can stare into the abyss with a great nihilistic plunge and emerge on the other side breathing and alive as Chesterton and David Bentley Hart alike would have us do: to celebrate the mystical minimum of all that is, but the band SLEEPING AT LAST did just that in their…
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Why Tara and I Quit Social Media. All Of It.
Starting this month, Tara and I quit social media. All of it. Deleted about ten years of followers on Twitter accidentally — that kind of kicked it off. Then I deleted about 25k in Reddit karma. Nothing to brag about, but certainly not an insubstantial amount either. She got rid of Instagram and Facebook. I…