Wednesday is for random thoughts!

1. One of the scenes in The Darned Conspiracy is entitled “Tapping PAC.” I enjoy embedding nods to Philly in my stories.
2. Exploding CoVid cases is forcing a re-think of our already re-thought Christmas Eve plans.
3. Bump used the personal pronoun “me” this week. So that’s new.
4. The new MacBooks are so amazing it is absurd.
5. There are few minor disappointments like pouring cereal into a bowl, only to discover that your two older children drank a gallon of milk in less than a day.
6. The wind chime I got for my wife last Christmas is tuned to “Amazing Grace.” Every now and again it plays the notes in the order of the song and It’s really cool. I also think I just heard, “So you want to build a snow man?”
7. When Advent begins, does that mean the long Lent will be over and we’ve shifted to the long Advent? Or are we stuck in endless Lent and I should just give up on the idea of sacred time passing?
8. It is March 262th.
9. There’s a Mickey Mouse Christmas movie in which Donald Duck is shown being out and about during the Christmas shopping season, stressed out by the crowds. All he wants to do is get home for some quiet and enjoy his hot chocolate. But when Daisy and his Nephews beg him to come out and he refuses they tell him to stop being selfish. An extrovert with zero empathy had to write that script.
10. I’ve started work on a second volume of Meditative Fiction.
11. We hear a lot about clergy abuse scandals in churches, and we should. I can think of few things as repugnant as a person using a position of power to dominate or violate other people, especially children. I would also like to highlight the abuse heaped on some clergy by their congregations–it’s as destructive as any abuse and bears the same hallmarks. What’s really sick about this form of abuse is that it’s often empowered by abusing authority figures who gain more power by encouraging the behavior.