Currently reading: Agency by William Gibson 📚
Wild blackberries are coming in strong. We picked a bunch the other day and turned them into muffins. They were very, very good! Just sent the kids out to get some more.
What fun! Thanks, @jean!!
Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, I fired up rtl_433 and a couple of really dirty shell scripts so that I can keep track of what’s going on with the smoker while I’m away from the house.
Currently reading: The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (includes The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle, The Living Flame of Love, Letters, and The Minor Works) by Saint John of the Cross 📚
Someone posted a Spotify playlist that neatly approximates the big AOR station of my Atlanta youth/adolescence. I’ve got that going in the background while the grill’s fired up again. Styx, beer, and barbecue smoke make for a pretty good combination.
These just went on the grill - dry brined overnight, then covered in an apricot glaze. I’m using apple wood to smoke them and the whole mess will wind up in tacos when they’re done. It smells ridiculously good even now.
Late June
Finished Zinn and am still trudging through Gramsci. It's dense to say the least, and I can't say I'm getting a whole lot out of it right now. So much of it (so far) is deeply situated in the Italian politics of the time. In any event, this will close out this period of politics and I'll be glad to switch back into spiritual reading (Saint John of the Cross), renewed efforts at regular lectio and so on.
I've been listening to a lot of retrowave via Spotify lately. It works well as background music while I'm working and scratches a deeply nostalgic itch. If you're not familiar, it's electronic music made today, but made to sound like it was made in the mid-to-late-1980s and 90's. A slightly creepier alternative, mallwave, can best be described as the music you might hear in...well, a dead mall: the lo-fi upbeat Muzak-pop-simulacra that you might hear crossing an atrium on your way to the Orange Julius.
Having reached Midsummer, I can report that the garden still seems to be doing well. The squash bugs finally arrived and now it's game of attrition to remove the little egg clusters as I find them. When I find the adults, I pick them off and feed them to the chickens, which is extremely satisfying. When the squash is done, I'll nuke that bed and we'll put something else there. Maybe spinach and mesclun mix. The cukes are booming and the tomatoes are starting to blush. The companion-planting is also coming along, though I think that planting it sooner would have given it a better head start in terms of rain. The hot peppers we direct-sowed also came up nicely. No blooms yet, but the heat is definitely agreeing with them.
And we're (nearly) off!
The vocations office dropped a note last Friday: forms from St. Meinrad (library and network access), class schedule for the coming year, retreat in October, first session in a couple of weeks and bring something to take notes.
TL;DR: Diaconate things are about to ramp up.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, pray for us!
This, that, and the other.
Wrapped up Mystagogy tonight with a session on basic apologetics. Got to the church with enough time beforehand to visit the confessional and spend 15 minutes or so before the Blessed Sacrament.
Still working my way through Zinn's People's History and the second Emergence collection. My wife is auditing some classes in preparation for post-graduate work in mathematics and spends the mornings on Zoom classes doing calculus and other arcana.
We're in a daily-thunderstorm sort of weather pattern at the moment which is good for the garden. The squash and cukes in the raised beds are going absolutely bonkers. Once again I've planted too much, and once again it's a constant struggle to keep vines trained on panels before they bust loose and take over the whole area. The Three Sisters area is still pretty chill, but I expect the pumpkins to take off before very long.
The hot peppers I direct-sowed are coming in and looking pretty good. Here's hoping they bear well in our long growing season. I really want to dry more of the chilis this time and the pickled habaneros from last year are still absolutely delicious. So yes, more, please. And this year, I will get garlic in. Two full beds, if I can pull it off. And then there are the plans for that asparagus next year, etc, etc, etc.
Radio stuff has been slow as of late. A bit of SWL with the RSPdx - utility stations and whatnot. Made a SSB contact with a Museum Ship on the Air, up in Muskegon, MI. I'll do more in the fall; there's too much to do outside in the good weather.