The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter -- And How to Make the Most of...
I realize that I'm nowhere near my twenties anymore, but this book is fantastic and has joined my short list of required reading for my kids and anyone who has anything to do with young people. I read...
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Pre-Eclipse Activities, August 2017
Vera and Glen brought a cotton candy maker that Mira really enjoyed. She is forbidden (by me) from eating cotton candy unless it's freshly made and she witnesses it. (That's just how cotton candy is...
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Total Solar Eclipse, 21 August 2017
Photo by our good friend Chad Roberts.*This is what I wrote in my journal not long after we saw totality in our front yard for about 2 minutes 19 seconds:That was one of the most amazing things I’ve...
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More of Chad's photos of the eclipse, 21 August 2017
These are small, low-quality versions of the photos. If you're interested in high-quality files, you can contact Chad directly. His email is included in a link at the bottom of the post.Stepping to...
View ArticleSidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie
I thought it would be fun to read this series, since there is a British TV show based on it that looks interesting. But after reading the following, I'm done: Hildegard Staunton was paler than he...
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The Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part One
Our local library (where I'm lucky enough to work part-time) is doing a program this year called The Ultimate Book Geek Challenge. The challenge is to read 50 books in 50 weeks and they have to fit...
View ArticleThe Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part Two
I have finished my fifty books for the year — in fact, I’m up to fifty-six, I think — and this is a surprise to me. I had been reading less in the last few years, so I wasn’t sure I’d make it to fifty....
View ArticleThe Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part Three
Category 10, Vintage mystery: The Bookman's Promise by John Dunning🎧I admit that this isn't really vintage mystery, but I'm justifying it because 1) there were too many mystery-type categories in this...
View ArticleThe Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part Four
Category 18, Short Story: "Novostroika" by Maria RevaThis was quite an entertaining story published in The Atlantic in December of 2016. (We had a subscription to The Atlantic for a year around then...
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The Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part Five, Or, An Aside about My Sisters...
Category 34, About a city: The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan GlaserHere's the story of how I came to read this book. Six of us Jacobsen sisters went to New York in September so we could...
View ArticleThe Ultimate Book Geek Challenge, Part Six
Category 35, Set in the summer: Idaho by Emily RuskovichThe main event of the book happens during the summer, I think. Or it could be fall, but it felt like summer when I was reading it. There's also a...
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Caucasus trip 2019, part 1
Dad (Jon) and I are roughly three weeks into a month-long trip around Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. We started in Armenia, made our way through Georgia, across the Black Sea to Ukraine,...
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Caucasus trip 2019, part 2
This post chronicles part 2 of my dad's and my month-long trip in June 2019, aka the part where we're not in the Caucasus anymore. You can find part one over here.In part one I mentioned that we took a...
View ArticleJesus and the woman taken in adultery
Biblical scholarship has long been aware that the gospel account of the scribes and Pharisees bringing the woman taken in adultery to Jesus was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel of...
View Article2019 in Books
Books I read or listened to in 2019, audiobooks denoted with 🎧: The Witch Elm by Tana French 🎧: I like her books. Good characters, good stories. But they always seem to go on a little longer than I’d...
View Article2020, January through May
These early months of 2020 might be a record for least reading done by me. It’s partly the coronavirus excitement, which means I’ve been reading more news, as well as cooking and cleaning a lot more,...
View ArticleDeutsche Sprache, Englische Sprache?
Eine Auswahl von Schlagzeilen, die ich heute, den 20. Dezember 2021, in den Nachrichten vom Spiegel (unter www.spiegel.de) gelesen habe:Chile hat jetzt einen »woken« PräsidentenCoronahotspot in...
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Teton Valley Sheriff’s Log, 19 January 2022
The Teton Valley News is our local small-town weekly newspaper covering primarily Teton County, Idaho and Alta, Wyoming.For our family the consistently most interesting section is the Sheriff’s Log...
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Rome: SPQR
Mira and I are on vacation and are visiting Rome for a few days, our first time here.I was aware that ancient Rome was called SPQR, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, “The Senate and People of Rome”. I didn’t...
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Maltese Cats in Sliema with Mira
Mira and I made it to Malta! This is where our trip really began, at the airport which has a nice aquarium:Some views around the town of Sliema where we stayed. It has big built-up tourist areas but...
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Malta Holy Week pageant Ħtija Tiegħu?
In Malta on Palm Sunday I went to a Holy Week pageant called “Ħtija Tiegħu?” which means something like “His guilt?” It was held in Marsa, a few kilometers south of Sliema where we were staying.The...
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Our Rome visit near Vatican City
Erin found us a nice apartment in Rome near Vatican City, with a view out the back to the dome of St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican. That wall contains the Passetto di Borgo which was an escape route...
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Malta devotional niches and shrines
Malta’s long history is very interesting, including what is widely thought to be the shipwreck by the apostle Paul in AD 60 described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles chapter 28, the last...
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Ancona, Italy and ferry to Split, Croatia
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to...
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