Sixteen years ago today, we got married. On that morning, I had less than $30 in my checking account, having spent the massive sum of $80 the night before on pizza and two liter softdrinks for our rehearsal dinner. My car was a small Kia with a leaky radiator someone had given me, because I couldn't afford a car. My bride was in the early stages of the heart failure that had killed her mother, grandmother, and cousin.

The little door to enter the crawlspace under our house is tiny – perhaps 18 inches square. Every time I have to go under our house, I swear I never want to do this again. The plastic that has been laid in the crawlspace to keep the humidity down rustles as I crawl on my hands and knees over it. It’s dirty and opaque, and in the worst parts of my brain I imagine snakes slithering under it, keeping warm as the temperature drops outside.

Kathy Escobar and Phyllis Mathis interviewed me on their podcast Soul + Practice: Raw Conversations, Real Practices, and it went live yesterday. Kathy was an early role model as I carved out this weird life I have now - she is one of perhaps 5 folks whose work changed my life. I think I've known her for 19 years now.

In the spring of last year, we ended up in the kitten rescue business. It started innocently enough - a stray cat had given birth to kittens in our backyard, in the hollowed out stump of an old pear tree. My wife, who does not do things half way, swooped into action.  In the 18 months since, nearly thirty kittens have passed through our house, and 10 adult cats have been spayed or neutered and then released back to their colonies, so they can live out their lives while not increasing the feral kitten population.

Before the pandemic happened (correlation, not causation - at least, not directly) I spent a lot of time as a c-level speaker at festivals and symposia and conferences. I was often mentioned on the program under the phrase, "...and other exciting speakers!" As in, "Come hear Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, and other exciting speakers!" Anyway. The point is, I always got asked for a brief bio for them to read before I came on stage or, rarely, to be printed in the program.

"In August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and---from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere.

In that kitchen I learned about alchemy - the practice, if not the word. If I close my eyes, I can see the light filtered through the handmade green gingham curtains over the sink that move with the breeze. I can hear the news being read over the small radio to the left of the sink, next to the snuff box.

If you google "best wireless printer", the whole first page is full of weird sites that have endless lists of printers listed, with links to Amazon or Best Buy or wherever. They are all affiliate links - you click a link and the website makes a percentage - often not just from that sale, but from all your purchases from that merchant over the next 24 hours.

As I said yesterday, I'm playing with flash writing. I struggle, because I love words. But that is probably because the writers I have been most informed and shaped by also loved words. I love a good story. In other words, I need to read more writers who tell stories with economy. Several websites pointed me to the memoir No Relation…

In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, when attempting to define obscenity, that while he didn't know how to define it, he knew it when he saw it. I've been playing for the last week with Flash writing, specifically Flash Nonfiction, and as I've attempted top explain what it is to other people, I keep running into the same problem Justice Stewart had - Flash is easier to recognize than to define.

My work on the web has always owed a lot to Jason Kottke. When I first started blogging at the end of 2003, he was my age, but already an elder on the blogging scene. A lot of my thoughts about blogging, the open web, owning your content, and publishing on your own site were shaped by or originated with him.

Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan has died at 71 years old, TMZ Sports has learned.

The late afternoon light streamed through the large windows of the Starbucks. We were here to euthanize our relationship. We had not spoken to each other in weeks. “How are you?” she asked. She smiled, paused, and then looked down at the table to break eye contact. “I’m fine.” I rotate the cup in my hand while it sits on the table.

The beloved chef, who brought French cooking skills to the American masses, is celebrating his upcoming birthday with 90 parties around the country.